Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, purveyor of pseudoscientific silliness (or “woo” as James Randi likes to call it) like telepathy in animals, was stabbed in the leg at a medical conference in Santa Fe NM yesterday, apparently by some guy from Japan. The injury was not life threatening, and his attacker was arrested.
Talk about negative vibes!
Sheldrake’s big idea is something called “morphic resonance“. The idea is that all living things are connected together by a telepathic internet of sorts. And yet the news report (linked above) refers to him as “a world renowned behavioral scientist”, yeah right.
Update: Here is a more detailed story from the local paper (The New Mexican): “Police arrest suspect after attack at lecture“. Here’s a highlight:
Hirano [the attacker -TB] had been attending the 10th International Conference on Science and Consciousness. Other attendees said he had been acting oddly. They said he confronted Sheldrake earlier this week, telling him he heard voices and saw demons. Another featured speaker at the conference told the man he was “full of negative energy” and counseled him to “calm down,” said Evan Mecham, an attendee from Broomfield, Colo.
See, I told you negative energy (vibes) was involved…
Here are some skeptical links on Sheldrake and his claims:
Rupert’s Resonance by Michael Shermer
The Psychic Staring Effect by David F. Marks and John Colwell (CSICOP)
Sheldrake’s Back by James Randi
April 4, 2008 at 3:14 pm |
I’m sorry, but are you expressing amusement that someone got stabbed? Astonishingly classless.
April 5, 2008 at 1:32 am |
Lighten up Francis.
Sheldrake was, fortunately, not seriously injured, and I was not expressing amusement that he was stabbed, I was using the occasion of his being attacked to mock, ever so slightly, his ideas.
It is ironic that a person who believes, in and promotes, telepathy was attacked by a guy who hears voices in his head.
April 5, 2008 at 12:08 pm |
Francis is right. Your post completely crass and tasteless. This is something any rationalist should shy away from.
April 5, 2008 at 4:44 pm |
I would think that at most medical conferences, someone wandering around hearing voices in his head and seeing demons would be quickly recognized as suffering paranoid schizophrenia or chronic amphetamine abuse. Either way, he should have been given more assistance than being told that he should “calm down”.
I don’t think it’s classless to point out the irony that participants in a “science and consciousness” conference weren’t able to recognize someone who is psychotic (and the potentially tragic results of this).
April 6, 2008 at 1:18 am |
you are a huge dickhead
April 6, 2008 at 2:25 am |
Why thank you Jacques, I love you to…
April 8, 2008 at 4:58 am |
[...] to show you that this sort of attitude is not confined to Randi fans, here is a transparently vicious post on the Sheldrake news by another apparently fundamentalist type, who protests his inoocence when [...]
July 8, 2008 at 10:09 pm |
Your comments are beyond reductionist and disingenuous. To reduce Sheldrake’s work to an internet analogy is to show scant knowledge of what the man’s work is actually about.
Oh yeah…your oblique treatment of his being shot? Puerile at best, bestial, at worst.
July 10, 2008 at 11:06 pm |
Jeez, mcclaren3, for a guy who advocates reading deeper into the subject matter, how did you miss that Sheldrake was -stabbed-, not -shot-?