Editing Rupert Sheldrake (section)

=== Academic debate ===
A variety of responses to Sheldrake's ideas have appeared in prominent scientific publications.

Sheldrake and theoretical physicist [[David Bohm]] published a dialogue in 1982 in which they compared Sheldrake's ideas to Bohm's [[implicate order]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sheldrake|first1=R.|last2=Bohm|first2=D.|year=1982 |title=Morphogenetic fields and the implicate order |journal=ReVision |volume=5 |page=41}}</ref> In 1997, physicist [[Hans-Peter Dürr]] speculated about Sheldrake's work in relation to [[modern physics]].<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Dürr|editor-first=H. P.|year=1997 |title=Rupert Sheldrake in der Diskussion |publisher=Scherz}}</ref>

Following the publication of ''A New Science of Life'', ''[[New Scientist]]'' sponsored a competition to devise empirical tests for morphic resonance.<ref name="Roszak"/> The winning idea involved learning Turkish nursery rhymes, with psychologist and broadcaster [[Sue Blackmore]]'s entry involving babies' behaviour coming second.<ref name="Blackmore 2009"/> Blackmore found the results did not support morphic resonance.<ref name="Blackmore 2009"/>

In 2005, the ''[[Journal of Consciousness Studies]]'' devoted a special issue to Sheldrake's work on the sense of being stared at.<ref name=sciam/> For this issue, the editor could not follow the journal's standard peer-review process because "making successful blind peer review a condition of publication would in this case have killed the project at the outset."<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.imprint.co.uk/Editorial12_6.pdf |title=The Sense of Being Glared At- What Is It Like to be a Heretic? |author= Anthony Freeman |access-date=12 December 2013 |archive-date=28 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130728012154/http://www.imprint.co.uk/Editorial12_6.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> The issue thus featured several articles by Sheldrake, followed by the open peer review, to which Sheldrake then responded.<ref name=sciam/> Writing in ''Scientific American'', Michael Shermer rated the peer commentaries, and noted that the more supportive reviews came from those who had affiliations with less mainstream institutions.<ref name=sciam/>

Sheldrake denies that DNA contains a recipe for [[Morphogenesis|morphological development]]. He and developmental biologist Lewis Wolpert have made a [[scientific wager]] about the importance of [[DNA]] in the developing organism. Wolpert bet Sheldrake "a case of fine port" that "By 1 May 2029, given the genome of a fertilised egg of an animal or plant, we will be able to predict in at least one case all the details of the organism that develops from it, including any abnormalities." The Royal Society will be asked to determine the winner if the result is not obvious.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327161.100-what-can-dna-tell-us-place-your-bets-now.html |title=What can DNA tell us? Place your bets now |journal=New Scientist |date=8 July 2009 |last1=Wolpert|first1=L.|last2=Sheldrake|first2=R. }}</ref>

===="A book for burning?"====
In September 1981, ''Nature'' published an editorial about ''A New Science of Life'' entitled "A book for burning?"<ref name=TimAdams/><ref name="Maddox 1981"/> Written by the journal's senior editor, [[John Maddox]], the editorial commented:

{{blockquote|Sheldrake's book is a splendid illustration of the widespread public misconception of what science is about. In reality, Sheldrake's argument is in no sense a scientific argument but is an exercise in pseudo-science ... Many readers will be left with the impression that Sheldrake has succeeded in finding a place for magic within scientific discussion—and this, indeed, may have been a part of the objective of writing such a book.<ref name="Maddox 1981"/>}}

Maddox argued that Sheldrake's hypothesis was not [[testable]] or "falsifiable in Popper's sense," referring to the philosopher [[Karl Popper]]. He said Sheldrake's proposals for testing his hypothesis were "time-consuming, inconclusive in the sense that it will always be possible to account for another morphogenetic field and impractical."<ref name="Maddox 1981" /> In the editorial, Maddox ultimately rejected the suggestion that the book should be burned.<ref name="Maddox 1981" /> Nonetheless, the title of the piece garnered widespread publicity.<ref name="maddox2" /><ref name="Rutherford" /><ref name="Rose 1988" /> In a subsequent issue, ''Nature'' published several letters expressing disapproval of the editorial,<ref name="josephson">{{cite journal |last=Josephson|first=B. D.|year=1981 |title=Incendiary subject |journal=Nature |volume=293 |page=594 |doi=10.1038/293594b0 |issue=5833|bibcode=1981Natur.293..594J|doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Clarke|first=C. J. S. |year=1981 |title=Incendiary subject |journal=Nature |volume=293 |page=594 |doi=10.1038/293594a0 |issue=5833|bibcode=1981Natur.293..594C |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Hedges|first=R. |year=1981 |title=Incendiary subject |journal=Nature |volume=293 |page=506 |doi=10.1038/293506d0 |issue=5833|bibcode=1981Natur.293..506H |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Cousins|first=F. W. |year=1981 |title=Incendiary subject |journal=Nature |volume=293 |pages=506–594 |doi=10.1038/293506e0 |issue=5833 |bibcode=1981Natur.293..506C |doi-access=free }}</ref> including one from physicist [[Brian Josephson]], who criticised Maddox for "a failure to admit even the possibility that genuine physical facts may exist which lie outside the scope of current scientific descriptions."<ref name="josephson" /><!--Additional citations needed: Other letters called for Sheldrake's ideas to be tested scientifically to determine their validity.-->

In 1983, an editorial in ''The Guardian''<!-- possibly by Brian Inglis --> compared the "petulance of wrath of the scientific establishment" aimed against Sheldrake with the [[Galileo affair]] and [[Lysenkoism]].<ref name="Galileo">''Being more than sorry about Galileo'', ''[[The Guardian]]'', 14 May 1983, p. 10</ref> Responding in the same paper, [[Brian Charlesworth]] defended the scientific establishment, affirming that "the ultimate test of a scientific theory is its conformity with the observations and experiments" and that "vitalistic and Lamarckian ideas which [''The Guardian''] seem to regard so highly have repeatedly failed this test."<ref name="Charlesworth">[[Brian Charlesworth|Charlesworth, Brian]], ''The Holy See—but it takes a long time to admit it'', ''[[The Guardian]]'', 19 May 1983, p. 12.</ref>

In a letter to ''The Guardian'' in 1988, a scientist from [[Glasgow University]]<!-- that is David P. Leader, Glasgow University--> referred to the title "A book for burning?" as "posing the question to attract attention" and criticised the "perpetuation of the myth that Maddox ever advocated the burning of Sheldrake's book."<ref name="Leader"/> In 1999, Maddox characterised his 1981 editorial as "injudicious," saying that even though it concluded that Sheldrake's book

<blockquote>should not be burned ... but put firmly in its place among the literature of intellectual aberration. ... The publicists for Sheldrake's publishers were nevertheless delighted with the piece, using it to suggest that the Establishment (''Nature'') was again up to its old trick of suppressing uncomfortable truths.<ref name=maddox2/></blockquote> An editor for ''Nature'' said in 2009 that Maddox's reference to [[book burning]] backfired.<ref name=Rutherford/>

In 2012, Sheldrake described his time after Maddox's review as being "exactly like a papal excommunication. From that moment on, I became a very dangerous person to know for scientists."<ref name=TimAdams/>

====Sheldrake and Steven Rose====
During 1987 and 1988 Sheldrake contributed several pieces to ''The Guardian'''s "Body and Soul" column. In one of these, he wrote that the idea that "memories were stored in our brains" was "only a theory" and "despite decades of research, the phenomenon of memory remains mysterious."<ref>{{cite news|title=Resonace [sic] of memory: Body and soul|last=Sheldrake|first=Rupert|work=The Guardian|date=6 April 1988|page=21}}</ref> This provoked a response by [[Steven Rose]], a neuroscientist from the [[Open University]], who criticised Sheldrake for being "a researcher trained in another discipline" (botany) for not "respect[ing] the data collected by neuroscientists before begin[ning] to offer us alternative explanations," and accused Sheldrake of "ignoring or denying" "massive evidence," and arguing that "neuroscience over the past two decades has shown that memories are stored in specific changes in brain cells." Giving an example of experiments on chicks, Rose asserted "egregious errors that Sheldrake makes to bolster his case that demands a new vague but all-embracing theory to resolve."<ref name="Rose 1988"/>

Sheldrake responded to Rose's article, stating that there was experimental evidence that showed that "memories can survive the destruction of the putative memory traces."<ref>{{cite news|title=The chick and egg of morphic resonance|last=Sheldrake|first=Rupert|work=The Guardian|date=20 April 1988|page=23}}</ref> Rose responded, asking Sheldrake to "get his facts straight," explaining the research and concluding that "there is no way that this straightforward and impressive body of evidence can be taken to imply that memories are not in the brain, still less that the brain is tuning into some indeterminate, undefined, resonating and extra-corporeal field."<ref>{{cite news|title=No proof that the brain is tuned in|last=Rose|first=Steven| date=27 April 1988|work=The Guardian|page=23}}</ref>

In his next column, Sheldrake again attacked Rose for following "[[materialism]]," and argued that [[quantum physics]] had "overturned" materialism, and suggested that "memories may turn out to depend on morphic resonance rather than memory traces."<ref>Memory over matter: Body and Soul The Guardian 4 May 1988, p 21</ref> Philosopher Alan Malachowski of the [[University of East Anglia]], responding to what he called Sheldrake's "latest muddled diatribe," defended materialism, argued that Sheldrake dismissed Rose's explanation with an "absurd rhetorical comparison," asserted that quantum physics was compatible with materialism, and argued that "being roughly right about great many things has given [materialists] the confidence to be far more open minded than he is prepared to give them credit for."<ref>Alan Malachowski, A bum note in morphic resonance, The Guardian 11 May 1988</ref>

In 1990, Sheldrake and Rose agreed to and arranged a test of the morphic resonance hypothesis using chicks.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sheldrake |first=Rupert |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SyeKFT9hPTUC&dq=rupert+sheldrake+steven+rose+chicks&pg=PT204 |title=The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature |date=2011-07-01 |publisher=Icon Books Ltd |isbn=978-1-84831-313-2 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Rose |first=Steven |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9SM3lw_4wTcC&dq=rupert+sheldrake+chicks&pg=PA49 |title=Lifelines: Life beyond the Gene |date=2003-10-09 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-803424-7 |language=en}}</ref> They were unable to agree on the intended joint research paper reporting their results,<ref name=":0" /> instead publishing separate and conflicting interpretations. Sheldrake published a paper stating that the results matched his prediction that day-old chicks would be influenced by the experiences of previous batches of day-old chicks—"From the point of view of the hypothesis of formative causation, the results of this experiment are encouraging"—and called for further research.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Sheldrake |first=Rupert |journal=Rivista di Biologia |url=http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/morphic/pdf/formative.pdf |title=An experimental test of the hypothesis of formative causation |year=1992 |volume=85 |issue=3–4 |pages=431–43 |pmid=1341836 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130727181657/http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles%26Papers/papers/morphic/pdf/formative.pdf |archive-date=27 July 2013 }}</ref> Rose wrote that morphic resonance was a "hypothesis disconfirmed."<ref name=rose/> He also made further criticisms of morphic resonance, and stated that "the experience of this collaboration has convinced me in practice, Sheldrake is so committed to his hypothesis that it is very hard to envisage the circumstances in which he would accept its disconfirmation."<ref name=rose/> Rose asked [[Patrick Bateson]] to analyse the data, and Bateson offered his opinion that Sheldrake's interpretation of the data was "misleading" and attributable to experimenter effects.<ref name=rose/>

Sheldrake responded to Rose's paper by describing it as "polemic" and "aggressive tone and extravagant rhetoric" and concluding: "The results of this experiment do not disconfirm the hypothesis of formative causation, as Rose claims. They are consistent with it."<ref>{{cite journal|title=Rose Refuted|url=http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/morphic/Rose_refuted.html|journal=Rivista di Biologia|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921153139/http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles%26Papers/papers/morphic/Rose_refuted.html|archive-date=21 September 2013}}</ref>