Editing Rupert Sheldrake (section)

=== ''Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home'' (1999)===
{{see also|Human–canine bond}}
''Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home'', published in 1999, covers his research into proposed [[telepathy]] between humans and animals, particularly dogs. Sheldrake suggests that such interspecies telepathy is a real phenomenon and that morphic fields are responsible for it.<ref name=dogs/>

The book is in three sections, on telepathy, on sense of direction, including [[animal migration]] and the [[Homing pigeon|homing of pigeons]], and on animal [[precognition]], including premonitions of earthquakes and tsunamis. Sheldrake examined more than 1,000 case histories of dogs and cats that seemed to anticipate their owners' return by waiting at a door or window, sometimes for half an hour or more ahead of their return. He did a long series of experiments with a dog called Jaytee, in which the dog was filmed continuously during its owner's absence. In 100 filmed tests, on average the dog spent far more time at the window when its owner was on her way home than when she was not. During the main period of her absence, before she started her return journey, the dog was at the window for an average of 24 seconds per 10-minute period (4% of the time), whereas when she was on her way home, during the first ten minutes of her homeward journey, from more than five miles away, the dog was at the window for an average of five minutes 30 seconds (55% of the time). Sheldrake interpreted the result as highly [[Statistical significance|significant]] statistically. He performed 12 more tests, in which the dog's owner travelled home in a taxi or other unfamiliar vehicle at randomly selected times communicated to her by telephone, to rule out the possibility that the dog was reacting to familiar car sounds or routines.<ref name="the">{{cite web | url=http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/if-the-truth-is-out-there-weve-not-found-it-yet/147748.article | title=If the truth is out there, we've not found it yet | work=Times Higher Education | date=30 August 1999 | access-date=19 February 2015 |last=Blackmore|first=Susan}}</ref> He also carried out similar experiments with another dog, Kane, describing the results as similarly positive and significant.<ref name=dogs/>

Before the publication of ''Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home'', Sheldrake invited [[Richard Wiseman]], Matthew Smith, and Julie Milton to conduct an independent experimental study with Jaytee. They concluded that their evidence did not support telepathy as an explanation for the dog's behaviour,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sheldrake|first1=Rupert|last2=Smart|first2=Pamela |title=A Dog That Seems To Know When His Owner is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations |journal=[[Journal of Scientific Exploration]] |date=2000 |volume=14 |pages=233–255 |url=http://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/a-dog-that-seems-to-know-when-his-owner-is-coming-home-videotaped-experiments-and-observations |access-date=18 February 2015}}</ref> and proposed possible alternative explanations for Sheldrake's conclusions, involving artefacts, bias resulting from [[experimental design]], and [[post hoc analysis]] of unpublished data.<ref name=wiseman2/><ref name=wiseman1/> The group observed that Sheldrake's observed patterns could easily arise if a dog were simply to do very little for a while, before visiting a window with increasing frequency the longer its owner was absent, and that such behaviour would make sense for a dog awaiting its owner's return. Under this behaviour, the final measurement period, ending with the owner's return, would always contain the most time spent at the window.<ref name=wiseman2/> Sheldrake argued that the actual data in his own and in Wiseman's tests did not bear this out, and that the dog went to wait at the window sooner when his owner was returning from a short absence, and later after a long absence, with no tendency for Jaytee to go to the window early in the way that he did for shorter absences.<ref name="Commentary99">{{cite journal | last=Sheldrake | first=Rupert | title=Commentary on a paper by Wiseman, Smith and Milton on the 'psychic pet' phenomenon | journal=Journal of the Society for Psychical Research | date=1999 | volume=63 | pages=306–311 | url=http://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/commentary-on-wiseman-smith-and-milton | access-date=18 February 2015}}</ref>

Reviewing the book, [[Susan Blackmore]] criticised Sheldrake for comparing the 12 tests of random duration—which were all less than an hour long—to the initial tests where the dog may have been responding to patterns in the owner's journeys. Blackmore interpreted the results of the randomised tests as starting with a period where the dog "settles down and does not bother to go to the window," and then showing that the longer the owner was away, the more the dog went to look.<ref name="the"/>{{Unbalanced opinion|title=Sheldrake's rebuttal of these findings has been excluded.|date=February 2024}}