Richard Dawkins Meets Max Headroom

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I first watched this video last week and still haven't quite recovered. So Graham Hancock's comment today cracked me up.

Has Richard Dawkins, arch materialist and formerly professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University, entered the DMT realms? When I asked Dawkins if he would take psychedelics to challenge his view of reality his answer was interesting: http://goo.gl/rqaU0. Now he's participated in this utterly bizarre video. Skip to 4.45 and watch everything: http://goo.gl/NHnSH

And, yes, Dawkins did indeed hint that he might just pierce the veil.

I still think this is one of the worst things I've ever seen. The incongruity of the Hawaiian shirt and the bleak, grey podium against black background... How can a shirt that loud be so dull? And then there's sing-songy tone of this utterly humorless man attempting to be entertaining and edgy.  And then... and then... Dear God.

I just think he was better when he was trying to brainwash Derek Zoolander to kill the Malaysian prime minister.

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From the Memory Hole: Dawkins/Sheldrake Face Off

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Once upon a time Rupert Sheldrake and Richard Dawkins had a debate, however brief. Except that it wasn't so much a debate as it was a set-up, proffered on false pretenses, and designed to make Sheldrake look foolish. But Dawkins was unable to spring the trap, came off looking a bit foolish himself, and the whole thing disappeared down the memory hole.

I previously mentioned Dawkins's "Enemies of Reason" here. I recently stumbled on Sheldrake's account of his futile attempt to discuss evidence with Dawkins. His write-up can be found here. Most telling, I think, is Dawkins's statement on science and belief.

The Director asked us to stand facing each other; we were filmed with a hand-held camera. Richard began by saying that he thought we probably agreed about many things, “But what worries me about you is that you are prepared to believe almost anything. Science should be based on the minimum number of beliefs.”

I would humbly suggest that the number of beliefs a scientist holds is far less important than their willingness to suspend disbelief and follow the evidence wherever it may lead. And that is the problem with so called "skeptics" like Dawkins. However many beliefs they may have they're completely caught up in them and refuse to surrender them even when they're contradicted by evidence. So they go about asking for extraordinary proof, not for what are genuinely extraordinary claims, but for anything that defies their belief system. And not only is no amount of proof enough, they won't even look at the evidence before dismissing it out of hand. And these are the people who think they're defending the scientific method.

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Russell Targ's exTEDx Talk

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Russell Targ from Suzanne Taylor on Vimeo.

I really loved Russell Targ's talk during the Brother Can You Spare a Paradigm, exTEDx event. It was an excellent program overall, but some of those talks are must hear and his was one of them. Suzanne Taylor has apparently uploaded the talks to individual videos on a dedicated Vimeo channel to replace the livestream version I originally posted here. More background on the TED's abrupt revocation of the West Hollywood charter can be found here.

If you haven't listened to these talks, I highly recommend doing so. I also particularly loved Gary Bobroff and I thought Craig Weiler did a great job of explaining the paradigm shift that is leaving TED behind. But the whole thing is worth listening to and it can now be accomplished in easily digestible bites.

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Sheldrake's View From TED's "Naughty Corner"

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

In very pointed comments, Rupert Sheldrake takes aim at the New Atheist cabal that co-opts the authority of science to advance their cause. He explains that there is a lengthy history of New Atheists and so-called "skeptics" targeting media organizations that give any coverage to topics they don't like. Their organized assault on TED which resulted in the still unexplained removal of Hancock's and Sheldrake's talks was just another chapter in their attempt to control the organs of information so that their world view dominates discussions of anything even vaguely related to the sciences.

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Graham Hanock on TED Censorship

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Two of my favorite writers, Graham Hancock and William Henry, discuss TED and its censorship of talks that deal with non-local consciousness. I won't belabor this, because I have a nasty head cold and I'm headed back to bed, but it's a great interview and distills what Hancock learned from this experience and what it means for the status of the reductionist, materialist science that seems to be driving TED's choices.

On that subject, I also recommend this recent article discussing materialist science and how it fails to answer the experiences of those of us who have glimpsed what lies behind the veil. It's a sumptuous description of the writings of Walter de la Mare and his unique vision of the supernatural.

Materialism - the philosophy, not the perennial human tendency to pursue and accumulate material things - sees the universe as a physical system. Everything that exists in it must be some sort of matter, or something that emerges from matter. In a fully scientific view of the world, only material things are real. Everything else is just a phantom.

In this view, science is a project of exorcism, which aims to rid the mind of anything that can't be understood in terms of physical laws. But perhaps it's the dogma of materialism that should be exorcised from our minds. Science is a method of inquiry, whose results can't be known in advance. If scientific inquiry is the most powerful tool for increasing human knowledge, it's because science is continuously changing our view of the world. The prevailing creed of scientific materialism is actually a contradiction, for science isn't a fixed view of things, still less a dogmatic faith.

The belief that the world is composed only of physical things operating according to universal laws is metaphysical speculation, not a falsifiable theory.

For the complete rundown on TED's attempts to censor consciousness see here. 

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TED Finds Deepak Chopra's Lost Talk

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Click for Video

As discussed, one of Deepak Chopra's criticisms of TED's censorship referred to his own talk, in which he rebutted Richard Dawkins in 2002. He apparently shamed Chris Anderson into retrieving it from the vault of hidden ideas. He has posted it, but in "the naughty corner" like Graham Hancock's and Rupert Sheldrake's talks. As with those, it's in an unembeddable format. It also comes complete with snark and insulting framing about its "misleading" science. But at least we get to hear it and I now have. I also forced myself to sit through the Dawkins talk he was responding to, which can be found here. It's actually titled "Militant Atheism." Wow.

Chopra's write-up on the restoration of the talk is here. His talk turns out to be mystical in orientation, arguing that where science is failing is in viewing the universe as separate from the observer. His quote of Krishnamurti thoroughly won me over.

A Christian fundamentalist was once conversing with the noted India spiritual teacher, J. Krishnamurti.

"The more I listen to you, the more convinced I am that you must be an atheist," the fundamentalist said.

"I used to be an atheist," Krishnamurti replied, "until I realized that I was God."

The fundamentalist was shocked. "Are you denying the divinity of Jesus Christ?"

Krishnamurti shrugged. "I've never denied anyone their divinity. Why would I do it to Jesus Christ?"

That the audience laughed at this anecdote while militant atheists scowled, seeing an imminent danger to sanity, reason, science, and public safety, shows how far apart two worldviews can be. But I persist in believing that an expanded science will take consciousness into account, including higher consciousness. Until it does, our common goal, to understand the nature of reality, will never be reached. A universe that we aren't participating in makes no sense, and our participation takes place at the level of consciousness, nowhere else.

And so it becomes apparent why this talk would go afoul of TED's rules, at least as they have recently defined them. It fuses "science and spirituality" -- that thing Chris Anderson can't really seem to decide if he does or doesn't want.

I could not help noticing that his talk also focuses a great deal on non-locality of consciousness, which, as discussed, seems to be the recurring theme amongst TED's targeted speakers.

Dawkins's talk starts out reasonably enough, arguing for evolution to be taught in schools. He even acknowledges that many religious leaders are fully on board with the theory of evolution and are some of its strongest proponents. So far so good. But minutes in he reverts to his characteristically nasty, insulting self.

But here I want to say something nice about creationists. It's not something I often do so listen carefully. I think they're right about one thing. I think they're right that evolution is fundamentally hostile to religion. I've already said that many individual evolutionists like the Pope are also religious but I think they're deluding themselves. I believe a true understanding of Darwinism is deeply corrosive to religious faith.

And he's off and running. Atheists are the smart people. Religious people aren't. Blah, blah, blah...

In a stunningly absurd attempt to turn creationist theory on its head, he winds up arguing the exact same thing in reverse. Creationists argue that creation is too complex not to have a designer. Silly creationists, argues Dawkins. Any creator complex enough to design all this while doing all the other things he's expected to do is inconceivable because it would compound the problem of complexity. Darwinism is simple and elegant, therefore it must be true. Creationism is too complex to be true reasons Dawkins and without a trace of irony.

Dawkins explains that his idea for stopping creationists is to "attack religion as a whole." For someone looking for simple, elegant solutions to difficult questions, such a Herculean task seems out of character.

So in a TED talk, you can't combine "science and spirituality" but apparently you can combine science and anti-spirituality. It's perfectly acceptable to verbally bludgeon people for their spiritual beliefs using the "language of science" and to "present one [anti-]spiritual view as the 'truth.'"

As I always am with Dawkins, I'm struck by how much he sounds like a religious fanatic. Here, he expresses his lack of patience with the noncommittal nature of agnosticism -- echoes of the condemnation of "lukewarm" faith I heard ad nauseum during my own flirtation with evangelical Christianity. (Revelation 3:14-17) And then of course there's the victimhood. Everybody thinks it's just fine to pick on the atheists! Atheists are marginalized, isolated, targeted. They're lonely. They're so lonely. Honestly he sounds like Bill Donohue.

I also note that he pitched his books in this lecture, albeit with wink and a nudge. And here I was given to understand that this is the ultimate no-no. Where's Al Meyers when you need him? I don't hear him calling Dawkins "sleazy."

Honestly, that this is what TED thinks is stellar enough for its main platform -- this angry, hate filled diatribe cloaked in soft-spoken, British, professorial tones -- is just another reminder that I'd rather traipse through the TED ghetto or listen to its discards. That's were the real "ideas" are spreading.

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Of TED, Militant Atheists, and the Revenge of Woo

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The controversy over TED's censorious nature just refuses to die. Over the past week, Deepak Chopra stepped into the fray and incorporated the voices of a number of credentialed scientists who aren't as easy to dismiss. Chris Anderson was forced to defend himself once again and in the very public forum of The Huffington Post. And once again, he didn't come off real well.

Chopra's initial volley can be found here. He and his co-authors -- Stuart Hameroff, Menas C. Kafatos, Rudolph E. Tanzi and Neil Theise -- took direct aim at the radical atheist contingent that seeks to suppress, not only theistic religion, but spirituality more broadly. This New Atheism, which has staked a claim on the sciences, refuses to allow any possibility of non-local consciousness to creep into discussions of science.

Freedom of thought is going to win out, and certainly TED must be shocked by the avalanche of disapproval Anderson's letter has met with. The real grievance here isn't about intellectual freedom but the success of militant atheists at quashing anyone who disagrees with them. Their common tactic is scorn, ridicule, and contempt. The most prominent leaders, especially Richard Dawkins, refuse to debate on any serious grounds, and indeed they show almost total ignorance of the cutting-edge biology and physics that has admitted consciousness back into "good science."

Militant atheism is a social/political movement; In no way does it deserve to represent itself as scientific. . . .  Dawkins, who has a close association with TED, gave a TED talk in 2002 where he said the following:

"It may sound as if I am about to preach atheism. I want to reassure you that that's not what I am going to do. In an audience as sophisticated as this one, that would be preaching to the choir. [scattered laughter] No, what I want to urge upon you is militant atheism."

In a society where militant atheism occupies a prestigious niche, disbelief in God is widespread, but it isn't synonymous with science. In his mega-bestseller "The God Delusion," Dawkins proclaims that religion is "the root of all evil." He describes teaching children about religion as "child abuse." He spoke publically on the occasion of a papal visit to London calling for the Pope to be arrested for "crimes against humanity." To propose, as Dawkins does, that science supports such extremist views is an errant misuse of science, if not a form of pseudoscience.

The arrogance of Richard Dawkins never ceases to amaze me. Chris Anderson, though, is showing himself to be a real contender on the self-important arrogance front. In his response, he trivializes the detailed post by Chopra, et al., referring to it as "your note," and reduces it to a series of questions that weren't asked but that he'd clearly rather answer than the points posed. It's always easier to win an argument with straw men than real people with nuanced views.

Anderson, once again, manages to show that he doesn't quite know what's going on or exactly why he's excluded these particular speakers from the TED "brand." A response from Chopra that includes commentary from eighteen working scientists underscores the incoherence of his position. Physicist Theresa Bullard points out, for instance, that his response blatantly contradicts the guidelines against "pseudoscience" he's defending.

In the TED reply they say:

"Nothing would excite us more than to include talks which offer a credible contribution to understanding [consciousness] better. Such talks could use the third person language of neuroscience, the first person language of experience or spirituality. We've carried plenty of each. We're hungry for more.

Yet in their guidelines to their TEDx organizers regarding the "Red Flags" of "Pseudo-science" topics to watch out for they specifically list:

• The neuroscience of [fill in the blank] -- not saying this will all be non-legitimate, but that it's a field where a lot of goofballs are right now
• The fusion of science and spirituality. Be especially careful of anyone trying to prove the validity of their religious beliefs and practices by using science

As she notes, use of terms like "goofballs" also undercuts TED's credibility. It's unprofessional, it's ad hominem, and it's more than a little childish. Such name-calling, however, is de rigueur amongst the New Atheist defenders of the materialist paradigm against all comers, no matter how credible. If they're all just "goofballs," you never have to actually debate them or in any way address their arguments. You can just dismiss them.

As discussed, debate with Rupert Sheldrake is assiduously avoided -- apparently because he tends to win. In the one case where he went head to head with Dawkins, the evidence of Sheldrake having cleaned his clock ended up on the cutting room floor. One of the juicier details in Chopra's rebuttal is that his take-down of Dawkins was also hidden, in this case by TED.

I'm grateful for the even-handedness that you say TED displays in matters of atheism, religion, and science. In 2002 I spoke directly after Dawkins, mounted a vigorous riposte to his main points, and received a standing ovation. His talk appears in full at TED's website. Mine doesn't, nor can it be found with a Google search. I'd be grateful to see it restored as a gesture of TED's lack of censorship.

I'm not a huge fan of Chopra but his arguments against New Atheism and scientism are impressive.

As I've pointed out more than once, it's easy to look smart if you only argue against straw men and caricatures of religion rather than intellectuals and scientists who hold a wide range of spiritual beliefs. I am increasingly of the opinion that New Atheism and materialist science can't win on an even playing field. So they continue to demand a different standard of evidence for "extraordinary claims," effectively putting a thumb on the scale. And they refuse to debate non-materialists who might beat them. When they, usually accidentally, end up head to head with people who debate their points and win, they kick the footage down the memory hole. And now we know that TED is fully complicit in that agenda.

A recent article on Reality Sandwich by osteopath Larry Malerba explains the difference between science and scientism and how TED is participating in the suppression of important scientific and medical advances.

Science was originally conceived of as a systematic and organized method of studying and learning about the world around us and within us. Eventually, it came to mean the study of the "natural" world, where natural meant the material world of physical objects. Over time it became co-opted by persons invested in an objectivist, reductionist, mechanist worldview. Subjectivity as defined by personal experience and most forms of consciousness became taboo and unworthy of the efforts of real scientists. As such, anything other than the strictly material world was out of bounds as a subject of scientific scrutiny. Nature was thus severed from its connection to all subjective aspects of human experience.

Conventional medical science in particular has been badly hampered by this same materialistic dead end ever since. By definition, it is unable to seriously investigate emotion, thought, imagination, dreams, consciousness, bioenergetics and other factors that can have a profound effect upon health and illness, without appearing to be unscientific. The origins of this, of course, was the perceived need for medicine to distance itself from the superstitious thinking that it equated with religious doctrine. The irony is that modern medical science itself has become doctrinaire in the process.

Scientism is an ideology that attempts to apply conventional scientific principles to fields of knowledge where it has no business being. Scientism is an exaggerated belief in the knowledge that science provides and the ability of science to use that knowledge to solve all manner of problems, human and otherwise. Hardcore scientism asserts that scientific knowledge is the only real knowledge. Only science can provide access to truth. All other forms of human inquiry and experience are not to be trusted.

. . .

In a single fit of hysteria over its precious reputation, TED has done a serious disservice to countless individuals on the cutting edge of the emerging new medical paradigm and, in the process, has gone running into the arms of the left wing fringe of medical scientism. TED may be unwittingly doing the bidding for an organized community of skeptics who are known to raise hell in calculated ways in order to press their anti-alternative medicine and anti-consciousness studies agenda. 

Meanwhile, self-proclaimed militant atheist Jerry Coyne is taking credit for influencing TED... except that he's not... except that he kinda is. He is quite sure that "woomeister" Deepak Chopra is talking about him. (Note the characteristic use of dismissive name-calling.)

I will claim, with some justification, that I am one of the “angry, noisy bloggers who promote militant atheism” who lobbied TEDx to do something about those videos. But what Chopra & Co. don’t know is that other people, who don’t fit into his pejorative category, worked behind the scenes to oppose the serious presentation of woo at TEDx. I have no idea what influence I had on the talks’ sequestration—if any.

Do you get it? He's definitely one of noisy bloggers but he has "no idea" if he had influence. He'd just like to think he did. And yet, somehow, he knows what went on behind the scenes -- those super-secret machinations that can't be revealed to plebes like Chopra or, say, me.

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ExTEDx West Hollywood Live Stream ~ Sunday 2:00pm ET ~ UPDATED

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.




Apparently the whole thing is embeddable so it can be viewed from this page. If that doesn't work out, here are the direct links: ExTEDx West Hollywood and Live Stream

UPDATE: This program has been moved to a Vimeo. Details can be found here. 

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Self-Deportation from TED?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I was wondering if and when we might start hearing from the other TEDx Whitechapel speakers. In their open letter, discussed here, the Whitechapel team said that a number of the speakers were unhappy with how Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake were treated by TED, but that they had been willing to wait and see how it would all play out. I noticed on my Reality Sandwich feed this morning that at least one of them has now gone public. Charles Eisenstein wants his talk removed and is urging others who are displeased with TED's actions to request the same.

With this in mind, I have a modest proposal that I'd like to extend to anyone who has (as I have) spoken at a TED or TEDx event. I propose that we respectfully request that our videos be taken down from TED-affiliated youtube channels just as Sheldrake's and Hancock's were. One might frame this as an act in solidarity with two fellow speakers who received shabby treatment, but really, I have no ax to grind. I do not want to punish TED, or make them regret their actions, or set them up as the bad guy. It is simply this: TED says it doesn't want to implicitly endorse the views of these men by having them associated with the TED brand. By the same token, I would prefer not to implicitly endorse TED's repudiation of the realm of inquiry those two (and TEDxWestHollywood) represent, by having my "brand" associated with TED.

Pretty straightforward, really.

Eiesenstein also beautifully articulates the problem with TED's position. (read: the opinions of the super-secret "science board" and the New Atheist special interest group that now dictates TED policy)



First, there's the scientism.

It is certainly true that the work of Sheldrake, Hancock, and many of the WestHollywood speakers is far removed from mainstream scientific thinking. Part of the mythology of science is that cogent thinking equals scientific thinking, and that therefore anything that science rejects is likely founded on shoddy reasoning, poor observation, self-delusion, or perhaps outright fraud. This belief depends on two assumptions: that the Scientific Method is superior to other sources of knowledge, and that the institution of science honestly upholds and applies the Scientific Method. Granting all that, we can draw a convenient line in accepting or rejecting new ideas by asking, "Is this idea consistent with accepted science?" 

Then, there's TED's unquestioning acceptance that what's good for technology and science is good for the world.

More broadly, TED generally seems to stand for several overarching principles that are foundational to our civilization's dominant narratives: that technology is a force for good, that technological solutions exist to all our problems, that life is getting better and better. The TED presentation aesthetic communicates a can-do spirit, offering a kind of showcase for the Next Great Thing. Unsurprising, given its origin as a celebration of "technology, entertainment, and design."

. . .

The challenge to science (as an institution if not as a method) that Sheldrake, Hancock, and several of the exTEDxWestHollywood speakers pose implicates much more than science. For instance, science has often been an agent of colonialism, devaluing and replacing indigenous ways of knowing. It has been an agent of social control, celebrating as progress the transition from traditional, organic, community-based modes of interaction to those which are planned, optimized, centralized, and engineered. It has often been an agent of economic and ecological exploitation, disregarding and destroying anything it cannot or will not measure. TED's genuflection toward science (as institution), and in particular an intransigent faction within that institution, is actually a defense, however unwitting, of a primary pillar of the world as we know it.

The business of TED is business... and imperialistic ethnocentrism.

Eisenstein and his "crowd of researchers" found many talks in TED's archive that don't seem to conform with TED's newly-defined, slavish devotion to the status quo. He is therefore calling on past speakers whose talks don't  align with global corporate hegemony as a value system to leave TED willingly.

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TED: A Postmortem... of the Censorship Debacle

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The issue of TED's pulling the Hancock and Sheldrake lectures isn't dead. It's still proliferating through the mainstream press and the blogosphere. But as far as TED is concerned, it's a wrap. They allowed their two weeks of discussion on each lecture and now they'd like everyone to just move along. They declined the opportunity to debate Hancock and Sheldrake, explaining that the discussion pages would suffice. But they also refused to explain their reasoning in those discussions. TED's final summations on the deleted Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake talks a can be found here and here. If only they were satisfying.

Despite the fact that many people called on them to explain their reasons for disavowing the talks -- after crossing out their initial justification -- they never have. You can glean fairly quickly that neither summation addresses the reasons by the fact that they're virtually identical and the talks were on very different subject matter. They're perfunctory and span only a few full paragraphs addressing only two of the "questions raised" in the discussion. Of the vast number of substantive issues discussed, TED chose only to address a couple issues of policy: whether or not consigning the videos to an unembeddable format on its back pages constituted censorship and an explanation of who their science board is without revealing their super-secret identities. We're left to take their word for their number, five, and vaguely described credentials.

While TED is advised by this shadowy body of "working scientists or distinguished science journalists," it is claimed that Chris Anderson's "team" makes the final decision. None of them, however, have seen fit to make their reasoning public. Since the original debacle of Anderson's attempt at explanation which had to be  redacted, they seem to have given up on explanations entirely.

In their more recent cancellation of TEDx West Hollywood's license, no factual justification has been offered. Suzanne Taylor just got a lot of "we're not comfortable with it" and that there were complaints about some of the authors. They refused to specify which speakers and what those complaints were. They just poked around with questions about certain speakers because they were "interested to hear" what was planned. They claimed in their note to the TED community that their "decision was not based on any individual speaker, but our assessment of the overall curatorial direction of the program." How's that for vague?



In their haste to dispose of this matter, they cut short the discussion period on the license cancellation by a week, citing some sniping in the comments. There doesn't appear to have been much of a flame war. What it was specifically that made the discussion so untenable is hard to say as only a handful of comments appear to have been deleted. It is clear from what's left that a good bit of it had to do with an apparent plant -- a participant who seemed to have secret admin privileges and was inappropriately deleting comments.

As with the Sheldrake and Hancock threads, TED made no further effort to clarify its reasoning or address concerns.

A couple of the West Hollywood speakers made statements about having their credentials questioned.

Said Larry Dossey:

I’ve lectured at dozens of top-tier medical schools and hospitals all over the U.S. for two decades. Although my colleagues don’t always agree with my points of view, this is the first time my scientific credibility has ever been questioned.

My TEDx talk would have dealt with the correlations between spirituality, health, and longevity, for which there is immense evidence; and recent experimental findings that point toward a nonlocal view of consciousness for which, again, there is strong and abundant support. In view of our lack of understanding of the origins and destiny of consciousness, and considering the demographics of the TEDx followers, I thought this information would have been of considerable interest.

As a board-certified physician of internal medicine, former chief of staff of a major hospital, author of twelve books and scores of papers on these subjects published in peer-reviewed journals, a recipient of many awards, a frequent lecturer at medical schools and hospitals, and executive editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, I’d be interested in knowing from TED where I came up short.

Said Russell Targ:

In cancelling the TEDx event in West Hollywood, it appears that I was accused of "using the guise of science" to further spooky claims, (or some such). People on this blog have asked what I was going to talk about. That's easily answered. I was co-founder of a 23 year research program investigating psychic abilities at Stanford Research Institute. We were doing research and applications for the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, Air Force and Army Intelligence, NASA, and others. In this $25 million program we used "remote viewing" to find a downed Russian bomber in North Africa, for which President Carter commended us. We found a kidnapped US general in Italy, and the kidnap car that snatched Patricia Hearst. We looked in on the US hostages in Iran, and predicted the immanent release of Richard Queen, who was soon sent to Germany. We described a Russian weapons factory in Siberia, leading to a US congressional investigation about weakness in US security, etc. We published our scientific findings in Nature, The Proc. IEEE, Proc, AAAS, and Proc. American Institute of Physics. I thought a TED audience would find this recently declassified material interesting. And no physics would be harmed in my presentation.

What TED has done in not singling out any particular speaker is clever in a slippery, smarmy kind of way. It means they never have to confront the impressive credentials of speakers like Targ and Dossey and explain how such accomplished scientists aren't good enough for TED. In other words, it's a dodge.

For all TED's apparent squeamishness about what the most vocal TED defenders call "pseudoscience" -- psi research, remote viewing, spiritually tinged research -- sorting out their reasons is ironically a bit like reading tea leaves.

Their own broadly stated justifications paint a dreary picture for the future of TED as they would eliminate some of their best TED lectures past. Either this is just pure hypocrisy or this marks a tightening of TED curation that will make the product awfully dull.

There won't be much in the way of cutting edge science discussed on TED because there can be no controversy. They explain in their letter on "bad science" -- which appears to have come out last December in response to a Reddit drama much like the one that got Hancock and Sheldrake pulled -- that, basically, only established science that has reached broad consensus is to be discussed in TED talks. Here are some of their bullet points:

• It is based on theories that are discussed and argued for by many experts in the field
• It is backed up by experiments that have generated enough data to convince other experts of its legitimacy
• Its proponents are secure enough to accept areas of doubt and need for further investigation
• It does not fly in the face of the broad existing body of scientific knowledge

And the lecturers cannot have "failed to convince many mainstream scientists of its truth" or speak "dismissively of mainstream science." Never mind that some of the most important scientific theories and breakthroughs upset the establishment and are initially met a great deal of resistance.

An acceptable speaker on a science subject "works for a university and/or has a phD or other bona fide high level scientific qualification." As Rupert Sheldrake points out in the interview posted above, at about the 17 minute mark, this criteria would have eliminated Albert Einstein just as he was publishing some of his most important papers. He was only a clerk in a patent office at the time.

TED just comes off looking overly cautious and incredibly scared. The connotation of its motto "ideas worth spreading" is that the ideas would be at least a little original. But you can't do much of that without challenging the establishment. Perhaps it should change its motto to something like "ideas that have already been beaten to death."

Other criteria clearly eliminates some of TED's best lectures. For instance their warning against speakers fusing "science and spirituality" would eliminate, as I suggested before, Jill Bolte Taylor's "stroke of insight" talk. It's one of TED's most viewed lectures of all time.

Click to Enlarge

As many have pointed out Elizabeth Gilbert's much viewed talk on creativity and "muses" should also be in TED's crosshairs.

TED's new-found concern over talks involving hallucinogens would remove a number of existing talks including this one by renowned artist Alex Grey. Wrote TED:

TED and TEDx are brands that are trusted in schools and in homes. We don’t want to hear from a parent whose kid went off to South America to drink ayahuasca because TED said it was OK.

We all know how easy it is for the average kid to hop a plane to South America without their parents noticing. But where Hancock emphasizes that an ayahuasca journey is a painful ordeal that no on would undertake recreationally, Grey had his life changing experience after dropping acid at a party. So obviously it's the Hancock lecture that has to go.

An open letter to Chris Anderson from Reality Sandwich's Ken Jordan offers as good a theory as any to explain TED's actions. Surmises Jordan, for TED, investigation into the non-locality of consciousness is a third rail issue.

The five people identified as problematic by TED work in different fields. Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist. Graham Hancock is a journalist who has written about archeological ruins. Larry Dossey is a doctor. Russell Targ is a physicist. Marylin Schlitz is a social anthropologist and consciousness researcher. The one subject they all have in common is a shared interest in the non-locality of consciousness, the possibility that consciousness extends beyond the brain. Each speaker has devoted many years to the rigorous study of consciousness through the lens of their respective disciplines, and they have come up with provocative results.

Through its actions, TED appears to be drawing a line around this area of investigation and marking it as forbidden territory. Is this true? In the absence of any detailed reasoning in TED's public statements, it's hard to avoid this conclusion. It would seem that, despite your statement that "TED is 100% committed to open enquiry, including challenges to orthodox thinking," that enquiry appears to not include any exploration of consciousness as a non-local phenomenon, no matter how it may be approached.

The other thing I can't help noticing is that the two TEDx conferences that invited TED's abysmally handled crack-down both had to do with challenging the existing paradigm. The TEDx Whitechapel conference that produced the Hancock and Sheldrake talks was called "Visions for Transition: Challenging existing paradigms and redefining values (for a more beautiful world)." The TEDx West Hollywood program that caused TED to pull its license is called "Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm?" (As stated, the show will go on and a livestream will be run on April 14 for those who can't attend. More of the deets can be found here and here.)

Of course the most obvious explanation for all of this is that TED is making a business decision. It needs to satisfy its wealthy donors and many of them are large corporations with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

TEDx was clever but risky. It allowed TED to spread its brand name without paying anybody. Not paying anyone while it collects huge amounts of money seems to be what TED actually does best.

But in recent months, a series of controversies dogged the not-for-profit organisation and whose acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, leading many to question the integrity of the organisation which charges audiences several thousands of pounds to watch a speech, yet pays its speakers nothing. In 2009, TED decided to license its brand allowing anyone, around the world to stage ‘TEDx’ events.

Some of those very popular lectures I pointed out above were TEDx talks, not TED talks proper. And it's lectures like those that TED will have to eliminate in future -- exactly the ones that made TED look interesting. In the end, TED is proving itself just another establishment shill. 

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TED: So Cowardly, So Cultish -- UPDATED

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Well. It's official. TED will not be putting anyone forward to debate Rupert Sheldrake or Graham Hancock, despite their generous offers. It does not appear that they told either of them directly. They did not respond on the threads where both of the censored TEDx speakers issued their challenge. They have done so through a spokeswoman when asked by a reporter.

A spokeswoman for TED told Positive News: “TED has opted for an open, online discussion, rather than a specific public debate with Sheldrake, Hancock and the science board. While the videos do not meet the stated TEDx guidelines, they will continue to be displayed on TED’s blog, with a lively ongoing debate.”

What the spokeswoman did not mention is that the "lively" debate will only be "ongoing" for a couple more days, because TED set a time limit of two weeks to allow discussion of the quarantined talks. (See above) So "ongoing" is rather a strong word for the discussion forum TED has provided in its back-pages.

It is also not a substitute for an actual debate between the relevant parties, the censored speakers and those who censored them. It would be an opportunity for TED to lay out its reasons for removing the talks, which they have thus far failed to do.



No one from TED has appeared on the discussion threads they've provided to explain their reasons. Instead we get inanities like this from Chris Anderson, in a response to a content-free eruption from a TED translator:

Krisztian, I understand your frustration with the talk. We've read a lot of such comments. They're what initiated this whole process. But I'd prefer you to make the case in more temperate language. I personally didn't think the talk was 'crap'. I spoke with Rupert Sheldrake a few days ago and I think he genuinely respects scientific thinking. He just disagrees with a lot of it. 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. [emphasis mine]

Thanks for being a TED Translator. You guys amaze me.

So the curator who made the decision to remove the talks doesn't understand that Sheldrake is a scientist, and not someone who "disagrees" with scientific thinking. And he would like some scientists to explain why they deserved to be pulled. He made the decision but he can't explain it. He refers to a science board who can't or won't show up even anonymously on the provided forum to explain the reasons and now we know for sure that TED won't put any of its brain trust forward to explain their reasoning in a debate.

After making a couple of comments of about that quality, Chris Anderson left the building. He has not been seen on either thread since March 20.

The discussions of both talks are informative and worth reading, just light on reasonable critique of either talk. What valid critiques have been offered have also been well debated by the many people who disagree with TED's decision. Such debate is healthy. I wish there were more of it presented but most of the criticism has come from trolls. And the bottom line for me is that, while I certainly think there are things to disagree with and debate in both talks, disagreement shouldn't lead to censorship or marginalization and that's what's happened.

The idea of actually debating these talks on their merits apparently terrifies TED. They'd rather hide the talks and provide a time limited forum to let Hancock and Sheldrake supporters vent their spleens, while they slink off and wait for the whole thing to die down.

If they did debate Sheldrake, they might have to grapple with the fact that one of the central points of his talk has been validated by two new studies. As discussed, Sheldrake raised a question about anomalous data regarding the speed of light. His statements were misrepresented by Jerry Coyne on his blog, who claimed that Sheldrake "argues that speed of light is dropping." Coyne consulted physicist Sean Carroll to refute Sheldrake's assertion that he never made, and Carroll accidentally confirmed Sheldrake's actual statements. Said Sheldrake in his refutation of TED's criticisms:

In my talk I suggest how a re-examination of existing data could resolve whether large continuing variations in the Universal Gravitational Constant, G, are merely errors, as usually assumed, or whether they show correlations between different labs that might have important scientific implications hitherto ignored. Jerry Coyne and TED’s Scientific Board regard this as an exercise in pseudoscience. I think their attitude reveals a remarkable lack of curiosity.

Now come two new studies showing variations in the speed of light as it moves through a vacuum.

Where did the speed of light in a vacuum come from? Why is it 299,792,458 meters per second and not some other figure?

The simple answer is that, since 1983, science has defined a meter by the speed of light: one meter equals the distance light travels in one 299,792,458th of a second. But that doesn't really answer our question. It's just the physics equivalent of saying, "Because I said so."

Unfortunately, the deeper answer has been equally unsatisfying: The speed of light in a vacuum, according to physics textbooks, just is. It's a constant, one of those numbers that defines the universe. That's the physics equivalent of saying, "Because the cosmos said so."

Or did it? A pair of studies suggest that this universal constant might not be so constant after all. In the first study, Marcel Urban from the University of Paris-Sud and his team found that the speed of light in a vacuum varies ever so slightly.

TEDx Whitechapel has also come out with a full-throated call for the reinstatement of the two talks. They also explained a bit about their thinking and the reasons for inviting Hancock and Sheldrake to speak.

We have been genuinely transformed through many of the inspiring TEDTalks; they have profoundly challenged our perceptions of and assumptions about the world, opening us up to new perspectives outside of the established mainstream thinking. Moreover, we really believe TED to be an ingenious medium to spread ideas across the globe. As such, TED represents the free and open flow and exchange of ideas globally, enriching and empowering an increasingly connected global community.

And it is with this passion that we decided to host a TEDx event with the theme “Visions for Transition: Challenging Existing Paradigms and Redefining Values (for a more beautiful world)’. We believe that in order to deal with the diverse and complex crises converging on our planet, we need to challenge the dominant thought paradigms and radically reassess the values which govern our world. In line with Einsteins wisdom “problems cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that created them” we saw TED as a truly special platform.

You can understand therefore, how shocked and saddened we were when we were alerted to the news that you had decided to remove Graham and Rupert’s talk from the TEDx Youtube channel and furthermore the disrespectful way in which they were treated publicly on the TED blog where you moved them.

I can't speak to what may or may not be going on behind the scenes, but in public, where this was posted -- it was also posted on both of the TED discussion threads -- there has been no response from the parent organization.

Sadly, I think TEDx Whitechapel has been dissed. I say that, in part, because TEDx West Hollywood was just dissed. This time it was pre-emptive.

TED, the parent organization, is removing the license of TEDxWestHollywood only a couple of weeks before their planned event “Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm?” after they had spent more than a year preparing.  Tickets are already on sale. After summarily dismissing the program with no recompense at all for monies that had been expended, they amended their stance to offer a fraction of the operating costs in compensation and all because they deem the program to be . . . wait for it . . . unscientific.  Does this sound familiar?  It does indeed.  This is the same charge that was leveled at Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock when TED first pulled their videos.

. . .

So what is the fuss all about? (here is her lineup of speakers.) Although TED refused to “name names” in their dismissal, whereby an argument could be made, it surely has to do with three of the speakers who are scientists, about whom they earlier had raised eyebrows asking for justification for their place on the program with the caution that if they weren’t pleased with the end results they would not post the talks on their YouTube page. Pulling the program was never brought up. The three are: Russell Targ, who will talk on the reality of ESP and Larry Dossey, who will talk on the revolution in consciousness and Marilyn Schlitz, who is a social anthropologist and psi researcher, speaking on “How do we shift our paradigm.” All three have the proper credentials along with ability to speak to the evidence and present their views using credible science. They, more than the other speakers, represent the real threat to the Materialists/skeptics at TED. However, in addition, TED also had objections to Marianne Williamson and Paul Nugent although neither was giving a science talk. This is the pertinent email to Suzanne Taylor:

We will be especially interested to hear about the ideas that Marianne Williamson, Russell Targ, Larry Dossey, Paul Nugent, and Marilyn Schlitz will be presenting.We feel that the pseudoscience struggle is an important one. TED and TEDx cannot be platforms that give undo legitimacy to false evidence and selective logic — regardless of brilliant packaging.

I'm sorry... the "pseudoscience struggle?" It's a struggle now? The phrasing is just so... odd. Wait. I had no idea Marianne Williamson had ever pretended to be a scientist. Oh, right. She didn't. Of course, neither did Graham Hancock. Has it ever been more plain that TED is way out of its depth on this issue? They seem to be badly parroting criticisms from their shadowy science board that they don't even understand. They appear to have been hijacked by militant atheists. I really wonder if something like this would make the cut in the current environment, and Jill Bolte Taylor gave one of their most popular talks, ever.

I will say this, though. I'm pretty sure TEDx Peachtree is safe. I say that because Al Meyers is a real team player. I mentioned Mr. Meyers, TEDx co-organizer and all-around TED sycophant, here. Meyers dropped by the Sheldrake and Hancock discussion threads long enough to drop the phrase "TED brand" ten or twenty times. He got really wrapped around the axle when he learned that Sheldrake had briefly mentioned his book at the beginning of his talk. So I learned something new about TED of which I was previously unaware. As a TED speaker you cannot self-promote at all. This is addressed in the, I kid you not, TED Commandments. There are ten of them. The sixth commandment reads:

No selling from the stage! Unless we have specifically asked you to, do not talk about your company or organization. And don’t even think about pitching your products or services or asking for funding from stage.

I didn't think there was anything pitchy at all in Sheldrake's talk. He referenced the book to provide a little context. It would seem the Whitechapel folks didn't see a problem either. But Meyer, who still hasn't watched the lectures, was very distressed that a book was mentioned at all.

If Sheldrake did, in fact, open his talk by promoting his book, then the talk should have never been uploaded because it is ABSOLUTELY a violation of the TEDx rules. That puts the TEDx organizer in a difficult spot - if they had seen an advance copy of his slides and this was an "ad lib" addition by Sheldrake, then that is pretty sleezy but as an organizer, nothing you can do about it.

Whitechapel may have been asleep at switch if Sheldrake didn't know his TED Commandments and it all reflects badly on the brand.

Every TEDx speaker is given the rules on how to give a TED Talk. If they did not receive them, then the TEDx organizer did not do his/her job. Anyone who knows about TED knows that you NEVER self-promote on the stage. The "TED Commandments" are all over the web. So if Sheldrake used the stage to plug his book, that is a huge red flag and should have been edited from the version uploaded to the web. Steve, if you don't like the rules, you are under no obligation to participate in the TED community. My TEDx event has declined to invite speakers who do not respect the brand.

In retrospect, Meyers felt bad about calling Sheldrake "sleazy." But he's very much on his guard about hucksters pitching their wares at TED conferences.

Last night I used an inappropriate word ("sleazy") to describe Sheldrake pitching his book in one part of his talk, which I deeply regret. It is unfortunate that using this word has riled up this already "spirited" group, including that of an alleged "TED Fellow," on here, and that someone would flag that comment as inappropriate. While I believe that folks are a bit "insensitive" in their responses to using that word, I apologize for using it.

I didn't have to read the deluge of comments I received when I woke up this morning to realize that there are some folks who believe VERY STRONGLY that TED has "wronged" these two presenters. What I can tell you is this:
1. It appears that a vast majority (not all) of the talks that TED has "flagged" in the past are related to a speaker who has a book published. When last year's talk by Nick Hanauer caused a stir for crossing the political line, his PR agent caused a stir. When these things happen, as a TEDx organizer, I have found that a speaker's true motives for taking the TED stage come out. I question those motives to some degree here. I don't need the "marketers" who responded to my comment to chime in. TED is NOT a trade conference, so speakers who are doing this or business development reasons should rethink their approach for this type of forum.
2. TED's guidelines are VERY specific about what speakers can/can't do onstage. A speaker can talk about the substance and not even mention the book onstage.
3. I suspect that TED will work with its staff and TEDx organizers to improve its curation practices and how it can prevent this situation from repeating itself. TEDx organizers had been issued rules about pseudoscience and must share the responsibility in how they select speakers. They are stewards of the brand, and they must do better in this area, or else the TEDx program could be at risk. [All emphases mine]

Hanauer was discussed here. I don't think it was about selling the book he didn't mention in the talk. That's chump change to a billionaire, venture capitalist. He probably paid more to his flacks to get the talk reinstated than he could ever hope to make in whatever book sales might have been generated. His talk was in many ways working against his own economic self-interest. He wants his own taxes to go up, so...

I can absolutely understand why TED wants to keep its conferences focused on ideas rather than pitching products. It could get very obnoxious if they didn't have some rules where that's concerned. But as Meyers lays it out here, it seems a little extreme. For one thing, books and other accomplishments speak to a speaker's credentials. I'd want to know. But what really disturbs me is this idea that speakers can't be there to promote their own careers at all. They can't have "a brand." They are enlisted only to support the "TED brand."

TED speakers aren't paid. They just get to rub shoulders with wealthy benefactors but they receive strict guidelines which are transparently to ensure the comfort of those wealthy benefactors. Eddie Huang's deeply disturbing story of cultish weirdness describes an organization requiring total fealty from its presenters.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you're doing a TED Talk, you are their product.


UPDATE: The disaffiliated TEDx West Hollywood will be presenting on its own and is calling for help in getting its message out.  The Live Stream of the event can be viewed on April 14 here.

I also just noticed this comment from the organizer on how TED addressed its concerns before it formally pulled the plug.

They want to cancel my program. Reason: “We are not comfortable with it.” I kid you not. That’s all. Repeated over and over on the phone as to why. No more, except there are objections to some speakers, but, “We’re not naming names.” I must be joking, right?

Once again, I think TED would be a lot more credible if it had some idea as to why it's making these decisions.

Read More

Will the DeleTED Debate TED?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The offer's on the table. Both Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock have very publicly challenged TED to debates.

Said Sheldrake:

I appreciate the fact that TED published my response to the accusations levelled 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?”

I would be happy to take part in a public debate with a scientist who disagrees with the issues I raise in my talk. This could take place online, or on Skype. My only condition is that it be conducted fairly, with equal time for both sides to present their arguments, and with an impartial moderator, agreed by both parties.

Therefore I ask Chris Anderson to invite a scientist from TED’s Scientific Board or TED’s Brain Trust to have a real debate with me about my talk, or if none will agree to take part, to do so himself.

Said Hancock:

I previously commented that I would not post further on this Blog page because it is so clearly designed to distract public attention from the disastrous way TED have handled their attempt to censor my “War on Consciousness” talk and Rupert Sheldrake’s “Science Delusion” talk. That in my view is the important point, for it bears on the future of TED itself as a viable platform for “ideas worth spreading”. I am heartened that so many of the 400-plus concerned people who have now posted here (and the 1000-plus who posted on the original Blog page) have refused to fall for TED’s sleight of hand and continued to press the organization to rethink its policy.

Since TED have retracted and struck out all their justifications for the original deletion of my talk from the TEDx Youtube channel (http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/ ) and since they have published my rebuttal, and done the same re Rupert Sheldrake’s talk, I agree with Rupert on a new post he has made on this page (http://www.ted.com/conversations/17189/the_debate_about_rupert_sheldr.html). There are no more specific points surrounding TED’s misguided decision that he and I need to answer. Nor is it possible to make much progress through short responses to nebulous questions like “Is this an idea worth spreading, or misinformation?”

But I now make this one further post, simply to add my voice to Rupert’s and to put on record that I, too, would be happy to take part in a public debate with a scientist who disagrees with the issues I raise in my talk. My only condition is that it be conducted fairly, with equal time for both sides to present their arguments, and with an impartial moderator, agreed by both parties.

Therefore I join Rupert in asking Chris Anderson to invite a scientist from TED’s Scientific Board or TED’s Brain Trust to have a real debate with me about my talk, or if none will agree to take part, to do so himself. 

Said TED:

Well... so far... crickets.

So will TED put anyone forward to articulate and defend their reasons for deleting these talks from their main platform and putting them in quarantine? Their options for doing so are fairly limited. Chris Anderson is obviously ill-equipped to defend his decision as he doesn't appear to understand it. The only time he even attempted to lay out reasons for TED's decision, he made such a pudding of it he had to cross the whole thing out.

Putting forward someone from their Science Board is even trickier because TED refuses to reveal their super-secret identities. But they do have options as one Lewis Smart suggested:

Hell, let one of the anonymous science board members speak from behind a screen, with his voice vocoded to retain anonymity. It would be hilarious.

It would! And I like a bit of cabaret. It couldn't possibly be more farcical than TED's attempts to justify itself thus far.

The other problem for TED is that scientists who've attempted to debate Sheldrake in the past haven't fared well. He has many critics in the science world -- particularly of the New Atheist variety. They love to call him a "crackpot" but few of them would argue that he isn't wicked smart. When they take him on directly, he tends to pants them.

A comment posted by one Sebastian Penraeth brought up a very interesting discussion and analysis of how Sheldrake has been treated by the "scientific community" -- although, it's kind of hard to call them "scientific" after reading a record of their behavior. Community, yes. Scientific, no. What was revealed in a dissertation by Philip Stevens is something more like an entrenched group-mind -- high on knee-jerk rejection, low on dispassionate analysis. An interview with Stevens can be found here and the entire dissertation can be downloaded from that page.

It speaks badly of the state of modern science that the editor of the prestigious journal Nature joked about book burning. But John Maddox's review of Sheldrake's A New Science of Life was entitled "A Book for Burning?" He did not actually call for the book to be burned -- just ridiculed and marginalized with other "literature of intellectual aberrations."

Maddox clarified his thinking some years later.

Without any sense of irony, Maddox compared the condemnation of Dr Sheldrake by the scientific community to that of the Catholic Church’s criticism of Galileo, saying “[Sheldrake’s theory] can be condemned in exactly the language that the Popes used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reasons: it is heresy.”

When editors of prominent science journals start throwing around ideas like "book burning" and "heresy," even in jest, we should become very concerned that the institutions of science look far more like arbiters of a religious orthodoxy.

But the other thing indicated by this ridiculing and ostracizing of Sheldrake by establishment scientists is that they're panicked. Maybe they should be, because Sheldrake is questioning some of the fundamental assumptions on which many people are basing their careers. And he does it well.

As per Stevens, there have only been a handful of debates between Sheldrake and his critics. Other such debates have been pointedly avoided and in one notable instance a debate with a certain very prominent atheist reportedly occurred and then slipped down the memory hole.

In 2007, Dr Sheldrake was contacted by Channel 4 who asked if he would be willing to take part in an interview for a television programme presented by Richard Dawkins. The programme was called ‘Enemies of Reason’ (although Dr Sheldrake claims he wasn’t told that when he agreed to take part).

According to Dr Sheldrake, in the subsequent debate (which was not included in the resulting series) Prof. Dawkins accused Sheldrake of “trying to turn the tables on him” and refused to discuss any research on telepathy, instead saying that Sheldrake was “prepared to believe almost anything”. Dr Sheldrake claims he accused Prof. Dawkins of being dogmatic and attempting a ‘low grade debunking exercise’. To which Prof. Dawkins reportedly said “It’s not a low grade debunking exercise; it’s a high grade debunking exercise”. Prof. Dawkins has never publicly talked about the interview.

It seems Dawkins, like many of those who've gone up against Sheldrake, had not felt it necessary to familiarize himself with his work. This leaves them at something of a disadvantage in their attempts to discredit it.

Lewis Wolpert, Professor of Biology at University College London, apparently lobbed ad hominem attacks and disparaged the subject matter for 15 minutes of his allotted 30, and gave up the rest of his time. “The blunt fact is that there's no persuasive evidence for [telepathy],” Wolpert summed up. Then he sat, looking bored, tapping a pencil, and pointedly ignoring Sheldrake who methodically laid out his evidence for telepathy.

Such self-satisfaction may play well to other self-satisfied skeptics but it didn't play well to audience members whose reaction was described in Nature: “Many in the audience... variously accused Wolpert of not knowing the evidence and being unscientific.”

Other debates have gone similarly. Of a debate with Jan Willem Nienhuys, botanist Richard Hardwick said:

[Sheldrake] comes well prepared, and he speaks fluently and clearly, as if he really wants to communicate. He marshals his arguments with precision, he provides (so far as I can judge) evidence for his statements, and he brings his nul hypotheses out into the open, ready to be shot down by the force of disproof.

. . .

In my judgement, Nienhuys’ counterattack failed... it seems Dr Nienhuys had not done his homework. He did not have any data or analysis to hand, and his attack fizzled out.

In a debate with Peter Atkins, Sheldrake asked him pointedly if he'd read the research he was dismissing.

Sheldrake: Well I’d like to ask him if he’s actually read the evidence? May I ask you Professor Atkins if you’ve actually studied any of this evidence or any other evidence?

Atkins: No, but I would be very suspicious of it.

Sheldrake: Of course, being suspicious of it in advance of seeing it is normally called prejudice.

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, who was caught giving critiques of  Sheldrake's work without reading it, agreed to debate Sheldrake... if only he could find the time.

In March 2003, Dr Sheldrake challenged Shermer to a debate, which he accepted, and several times and venues were suggested, but all were rejected by Shermer. As of 2009, the debate has still not taken place.

What Stevens found in researching Sheldrake's relationship to the scientific community is that they badly depart from the rules and norms of science in their dealings with him. They dismiss his research without reading it. They make demonstrably false claims about the results and methodology. In one case, a colleague of Sheldrake's replicated his research but, shall we say, selectively reported his own results.

Sheldrake had set an experiment into pet-owner telepathy, finding that even with controls for any possible cuing and patterns, the dog in the study went to the window more than 3 times more often when her owner was headed home.

Jaytee spent 18% of the time at the window before Smart was told to return home, 33% of the time when she had been told to go home but had not yet started off in the car, and 65% of the time when she was travelling home.

His colleague Richard Wiseman replicated the study and pronounced it a failure. He got much press for disproving pet-owner telepathy. But when Sheldrake requested the data from the study, he found that, in fact, Wiseman's results were much like Sheldrake's, with the dog going to the window substantially more often when the owner was headed home. This, Wiseman did not bother to report in his research paper.

In 2007, nine years after the original paper was published and over eleven years after the completion of the research, during an interview with Alex Tsakiris on Skeptiko, Richard Wiseman said “I don't think there’s any debate that the patterning in my studies is the same as the patterning in Rupert’s studies...it’s how it’s interpreted.

Well, no, it isn't. Hiding data is hiding data, and data can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Who's to say that his interpretation of that data is correct and Sheldrake's isn't?

It's very easy to dismiss as "pseudoscience" research into things classified as "paranormal." Many people won't even question that assessment. But one hopes that establishment scientists wouldn't approach the subject matter in a manner so sloppy, so lazy, and even misleading, that it borders on misconduct.

The problem for establishment sciences is that some of the results in this outre research are very compelling. It's marginalized by applying very different standards of evidence for status quo science and that which challenges it.

I have long hated the phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I reads to me like an admission of bias. Just what constitutes "extraordinary" is extremely subjective. Stevens provides a little history of this now well-worn phrase.

The French mathematician and astronomer, Pierre-Simon Laplace said that “The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.”⁹ This idea was later expanded upon by the sociologist Marcello Truzzi who said “In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded... and when such claims are extraordinary, that is, revolutionary in their implications for established scientific generalisations already accumulated and verified, we must demand extraordinary proof.”¹⁰ This was later popularised by Carl Sagan who created the phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.

This would seem to fly in the face of science as a dispassionate practice, and as Stevens explains, pretty much throws the Mertonian norms out the window.

Stevens quotes Wiseman in another context as saying:

I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do... Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions.

Again, it's a clear admission of bias. Screw any concept of equity and dispassionate, results-based science -- and torture the English language in the process.

The talk by Sheldrake that was deleted by TED didn't get into any of his research into telepathy or other phenomena. If anything, it was more threatening to the status quo. It was on philosophy of science and questioned the willingness of establishment scientists to challenge the assumptions of materialist science.

Thus far, TED has been unable to explain its specific problems with the speech. As stated, what reasons it initially laid out were thoroughly refuted, and had to be crossed out. One hopes that if they are sticking by their decision to hide his and Hancock's lectures in increasingly obscure locations, they could at least put someone forward in a debate to explain it. And one hopes they would do a better job of it than their efforts so far.

In their original criticism of Sheldrake's talk -- that would be the crossed out part -- they took issue with his statements about natural constants. They referred the reader to a "careful rebuttal" of his statements by physicist Sean Carroll, as quoted by Jerry Coyne. But even though that rebuttal included a table omitting the data from the time period Sheldrake referred to, it not only didn't disprove his statements. It validated them. Carroll's other table showed exactly what Sheldrake claimed.

In my talk I said that the published values of the speed of light dropped by about 20 km/sec between 1928 and 1945. Carroll’s “careful rebuttal” consisted of a table copied from Wikipedia showing the speed of light at different dates, with a gap between 1926 and 1950, omitting the very period I referred to. His other reference (http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/speedoflight.html) does indeed give two values for the speed of light in this period, in 1928 and 1932-35, and sure enough, they were 20 and 24km/sec lower than the previous value, and 14 and 18 km/sec lower than the value from 1947 onwards.

Coyne's post is premised on a straw man -- that Sheldrake claimed the speed of light was dropping. His point of course was that the recorded speed varied for a period time and that this anomaly might merit further investigation. And as one Conor O' Higgins points out, in the discussion thread, Carroll also restated another of Sheldrake's more eyebrow-raising claims.

Seán Carroll also backed up Sheldrake's claim about the speed of light being fixed by convention rather than empirical measurement:

Rupert Sheldrake: "How can we be so sure it's not going on today and that the present values are not produced by intellectual phase-locking? He said, 'We know that's not the case'. I said, 'How do we know?' He said, 'Well,' he said, 'We've solved the problem.' I said, 'How?' He said 'We fixed the speed of light by definition in 1972.' " (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEo2hChKeMs&t=12m15s)

Seán Carroll: "Indeed, today the speed of light is fixed by definition, not by measurement." (http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/tedx-talks-completely-discredited-rupert-sheldrake-speaks-argues-that-speed-of-light-is-dropping/)

So, if say, Sean Carroll is put forward by TED to debate Sheldrake, he might want to stop agreeing with him so much.

I will actually be pleasantly surprised if TED accepts the challenge by their censored speakers to debate. I expect they will demur. They will either continue to ignore the offers or beg off with some excuse for not putting anyone forward. They'll say they want their Science Board to remain anonymous and reject the suggestion of putting them behind a screen -- which is too bad because that's my favorite suggestion thus far. They'll pull a Michael Shermer and agree to a debate but refuse to schedule a time for years on end. Or they'll go for the tried and true method. They'll say it would be terribly bad science to give these ideas even a modicum of respectability by debating them. But I doubt they'll go through with a debate. I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

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TED: It Gets So Much Worse

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Just when you thought the folks at TED couldn't sink any lower, they do. Not happy with ghettoizing Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake's TEDx talks, now they're shipping them off to Siberia. If I had to guess, I'd say they're trying to distract from 26 pages of comments that make TED look really bad. The new locations for the video embeds that can't be embedded anywhere else or seen independently doesn't even include the comments section. For that, you have to follow yet another link to a comments page and the comment length is limited. Here's the latest update on this from Graham Hancock:

New and deeply disappointing TED tactic

Just when I thought TED had seen the error of their ways and were trying to fix things (see my post here: http://www.facebook.com/Author.GrahamHancock/posts/10151559299442354 ) I receive an email from TED Curator Chris Anderson telling me that yet another of their famous Blog pages has now been set up, this one apparently as a special standalone ghetto for discussion of my “War on Consciousness” presentation. This tactic helps to distance TED from the PR debacle they created for themselves by axing my talk from their Youtube channel in the first place (where it had attracted hundreds of comments and 132,000 views). Now not only is the presentation cut off from the discussion initiated by all those original commentators (and their ability to share it) but it is also cut off from the new discussion that followed exposure of TED’s censorship and shoddy methods – here: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/ and here: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/18/graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake-a-fresh-take/

Worse still, the comment section will close after two weeks. 

Graham Hancock's new page is here and Rupert Sheldrake's here.

To recap, here is the TED saga, in order, starting with the lectures, which have been reposted by other people.

Graham Hancock on Mother Ayahuasca
Rupert Sheldrake's Takedown of Scientism
TED's War on Consciousness
Is TED a Cult?
The TED Censtorship Saga Continues

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The TED Censorship Saga Continues

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Graham Hancock posted last evening that there has been a small victory in the battle against TED's censorship of his and Rupert Sheldrake's lectures. 

I appreciate and respect the fact that TED have now bitten the bullet -- which cannot have been easy for them -- and fully retracted their original incorrect allegations against the content of my TEDx presentation "The War on Consciousness". They have done so by crossing out the original allegations and publishing my rebuttal here: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/

They have done the same as regards their original incorrect allegations against the content of the TEDx presentation "The Science Delusion" by my colleague Rupert Sheldrake.

Yes, if you look at the blog post set up to quarantine Hancock and Sheldrake's ideas, their original stated reasons for deleting the videos from YouTube have been crossed out and the rebuttals have been added. But the update at the top of the post doesn't really acknowledge their rebuttals. It refers the reader to their new page.

UPDATE: Please see our new blog post Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake, a fresh take, which replaces the x-ed out text below.

So by all means, read their "fresh take," but if you're looking for an explanation of their reasons for deleting the videos from their standard platform you will be sorely disappointed. This is the extent of it.

Both Sheldrake and Hancock are compelling speakers, and some of the questions they raise are absolutely worth raising. For example, most thoughtful scientists and philosophers of science will agree it’s true that science has not moved very far yet in solving the riddle of consciousness. But the specific answers to that riddle proposed by Sheldrake and Hancock are so radical and far-removed from mainstream scientific thinking that we think it’s right for us to give these talks a clear health warning and to ask further questions of the speakers. TED and TEDx are brands that are trusted in schools and in homes. We don’t want to hear from a parent whose kid went off to South America to drink ayahuasca because TED said it was OK. But we do think a calmer, reasoned conversation around these talks would be interesting, if only to help us define how far you can push an idea before it is no longer “worth spreading.”

How Hancock and Sheldrake are "so radical and far-removed from mainstream scientific thinking" they do not say. Their nameless, faceless Science Board says that it is so, therefore it is so.

So here is where TED stands to date. They've removed the videos from YouTube. They provided a litany of reasons for that removal. Hancock, Sheldrake and numerous commenters on that thread pressed them to explain how their critiques in any way applied to the talks in question. Hancock asked them repeatedly to show where in his talk he said any of the things they said he said. The best Chris Anderson could come up with was that they'd get back to him on that. They did not. Clearly, being unable to justify their list of reasons for removal, they crossed them all out. They then referred people to a new page justifying their reason for removing the videos, which does nothing of the kind.

Still missing in action: any explanation of their reasons for removing the videos.

I highly recommend reading the original blog post to which they consigned the matter. The comment section now stands at 25 pages and counting. I normally hate reading comments because they so rapidly degenerate into pointless name-calling and trollery, but despite TED's best efforts to make the commenters look like a deranged Hancock fan cabal, the thread is largely made up of very lucid comments. Many extremely knowledgeable people challenged TED to explain itself and, and as stated, TED has still avoided doing so. Instead they've dismissed the commenters as "hordes of supporters sent our way by Graham Hancock." Read the comments. You'll see that nothing of the kind is true. It's the most reasonable comment thread I've read in an open comment section in some time.

In addition to challenging TED to explain itself, there are numerous requests for TED to remove other lectures which resulted in credible critiques, such as this one. Those requests remain unacknowledged as of this writing.

The most risible comments in the thread come from TED people, and there aren't many of those. This one stood out. It's from one Al Meyers who runs TEDx Peachtree.

Click to Enlarge

Let's unpack this, shall we?

I have not read all the comments, nor have I watched the talks in question. However, I'm going to support David and Stephen 100% here.

In other words, Meyers has no idea what's going on, but whatever it is, he's throwing his full support behind TED on whatever it is they're saying.

The brand equity is at risk if TED is spreading ideas claiming to be supported by scientific research, yet subsequently proven otherwise.

So Mr. Meyers has absolutely no idea how science works. That would mean that no scientific hypothesis could ever be discussed in a TED lecture because hypotheses are disproved all the time. So are theories. So much of what we accept as "fact" is just theory that could be disproved tomorrow. It's part of the process. Such are the dangers of scientific dogmatism -- this horribly warped idea that science produces unassailable facts, rather than a continuously revised body of research and knowledge. If no scientist could ever risk being wrong, science couldn't happen.

TED's brand... brand equity is at risk... built a brand... best for the brand... not letting social media wreck havoc on the brand...

Meyers uses the word "brand" five times in that one, brief paragraph. In other words, this was a marketing decision and Meyers fully and unequivocally supports TED's commitment to market-based science.

Meyers is a good soldier and, as near as I can tell, a good representative of the TED  ethos. I have no idea what's going on or why we're doing what we're doing but the people I've vested with authority say it's so, so it is so.

The people TED has vested with authority is those who must not be named, aka., their Science Board.

They are (deliberately) anonymous, for obvious reasons, but they are respected working scientists, and writers about science, from a range of fields, with no brief other than to help us make these judgements. If a talk gets flagged they will advise on whether we should act or not.

So this star chamber shall heretofore decide what lectures are allowed to see the light of day. Their reasons don't matter. TED won't even bother to try to explain them anymore because when they do they just bungle them and have to cross the whole thing out.

Am I alone in thinking that if TED is going to make a decision to censor something they should at least be able to articulate their reasons, rather than pointing to an anonymous panel? By their own admission, they could not. The result was in their words "clumsy" and "less than convincing," but it's also the closest we're ever going to get to an explanation.

We do, however, have some indication of just who it was put pressure on TED to silence Hancock and Sheldrake. We know because TED's Emily McManus took the time to thank them personally.

And we're grateful to those who've written about this talk in other forums, including but not limited to Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, Kylie Sturgess and some thoughtful Redditors.

In other words, it's the New Atheist brigade, once again, making the world safe for scientism. McManus, by the way, also identifies as an atheist. I have no problem with atheism. I do have a problem with fundamentalists who set out to crush any view that does not comport with this very particular stripe of atheist world view, and that is exactly what's happened here. A comment by Kent Bye even identifies a timeline. It's actually quite clear what happened, as Rupert Sheldrake acknowledges in his rebuttal to be found here.

As I've said more than once, the New Atheists make me nervous for the same reason the Christian Right makes me nervous. They're bullies and if you want to see that bullying in action, just roll up your trousers and wade into the chain of events that led to the censorship of Hancock and Sheldrake's talks.

As I noted the other day, atheists make up 3 percent of the population of the United States. There's nothing wrong with being a minority population and I will always fight for the right of the minority to have their views respected. I wish the even tinier minority of New Atheists had the same kind of respect for everybody else. But if you're an evangelical minority, determined to spread the good news that there is no God, it helps if you're a really loud, aggressive, and self-satisfied, minority.

What it makes me think of is the early days of the Moral Majority -- which was neither -- who codified the now well-worn method of targeting advertisers on shows that did not comport with their views. This trend was rather brilliantly satirized, I thought, by WKRP in Cincinnati, at the height of the furor.

The most dangerous thing about ideologues is that they never think they're ideologues. They just think they're right.

TED, of course, didn't fight back like our fictional heroes at WKRP. They folded like a cheap tent.

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The TEDx Whitechapel program Hancock and Sheldrake were invited to speak at was subtitled "Challenging existing paradigms and redefining values (for a more beautiful world)." But it would seem the parent organization has absolutely no interest in doing that.

The conundrum was summed up brilliantly by a commenter named Geoff Fitch.

If Sheldrake’s criticism are valid, they cannot simply consult their “Scientific Board” for an opinion, since, in all likelihood they would be subject to very cultural blinders that Sheldrake exposes. Is there anyone in the TED leadership that understands what Sheldrake is pointing to and can identify it in your own thinking and assumptions? Will you speak up?

I wouldn't hold my breath. TED's willingness to accept the judgement of Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, and their ilk seems all too clear. They won't let these "heretical" ideas be debated fairly, in an open forum. There apparently was a vigorous debate well under way on YouTube which was deleted with Graham Hancock's video. It's all gone down the memory hole in favor of an unexplained, unjustified decision by a shadowy Science Board.

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