overcoming the hard-won consensus

Scientists claiming to have evidence of life after death and the powers of telepathy triggered a furious row at Britain’s premier science festival yesterday. ... The disputed session featured research from Rupert Sheldrake, an independent biologist who is funded by Trinity College, Cambridge, that claims to have found evidence that some people know telepathically who is calling them before they answer the telephone. Other presentations came from Peter Fenwick, a doctor who thinks deathbed visions suggest that consciousness survives when people die, and from Deborah Delanoy of the University of Hertfordshire, whose work suggests that people can affect the bodies of others by thinking about them. ... “Work in this field is a complete waste of time,” said Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford.

The "furious row," it turns out, what not so much that scientists had these ideas (though critics took as many potshots as they could at what they called nothing more than a "charlatan’s fantasy"), but rather that the panelists were allowed to present their findings without the usual opposing view also being presented. Grudgingly, I have to agree with the critics on this one: The work can only truly be seen for its worth if opposing work is also presented, thus allowing participants to decide for themselves which is the most compelling case. As some of the participants said, the way these topics were presented was like "inviting creationists to address the prestigious meeting without an opposing view from evolutionary biologists."

On the other hand, I think it rather biased that there would be a furor over this, regardless, when we all know that, had the papers dismissed the afterlife and telepathy as illusion or chicanery, there would have been no uproar at all. Which means that what this really boils down to is scientists being confronted with something that shakes the foundations of their world views with no one there to throw them a life ring.

Just like this other news of "taboo" science, in which orthopedic surgeon Edwin Cooper has discovered that "electricity applied deep in the brain can jolt patients out of irreversible comas."

Cooper started testing this hypothesis in 1993. ... The results indicate that people given electrical stimulation emerge from comas sooner and then regain function more quickly than if they are given only traditional treatment. They're more likely to leave the hospital under their own steam, with less-severe disabilities than would be predicted by the nature and extent of their injuries. ... But despite being published in the peer-reviewed journals "Brain Injury" and "Neuropsychological Rehabilitation," his work has yet to attract the attention of mainstream researchers. ... Cooper's best hope may lie overseas in Japan, where over the last two decades doctors have used electrical stimulation on hundreds of patients -- some of whom have been unconscious for many years. The evidence that the Japanese doctors have amassed could confirm Cooper's claims and bring hope to the families of patients most American doctors consider beyond cure. But it may also undermine the hard-won yet fragile consensus on what, neurologically speaking, makes someone alive and when it is acceptable to pull the plug.

Read that last part again: But it may also undermine the hard-won yet fragile consensus on what, neurologically speaking, makes someone alive and when it is acceptable to pull the plug.

Yes, that's the rub with all these kinds of things: Overcoming the "hard-won consensus" of mainstream science.

Sources

• Theories of telepathy and afterlife cause uproar at top science forum; Mark Henderson; Times Online; September 06, 2006 (www.timesonline.co.uk)


• Back From the Dead; Gary Greenberg; Wired Magazine; September 2006 (www.wired.com)