Editing Rupert Sheldrake (section)

====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>