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My friend cited a study by Rupert Sheldrake which ran an experiment over several years that video taped dogs, showing that dogs knew when their owner was coming home due to some psychic link. He published a paper called: A Dog That Seems to Know When His Owner Is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations.

He seem to be a frequently well references researcher, looking over Google scholar. He even published a book about the results.

Has this been independently verified, do animals have telepathic links with their owners?

Oddthinking
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Kit Sunde
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    dogs have excellent hearing. They can hear your car approaching long before a human can. Get a new car, and for a few days they're not going to associate that sound with you... – jwenting Apr 27 '11 at 13:51
  • @jwenting - From what my friend said about what he read in the book the dog would start waiting when the owner left work, which I would assume is far away if the driver needs a car to even get back. But you are right about dog hearing. :) – Kit Sunde Apr 27 '11 at 14:17
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    There's a whole bunch of logical and experimental fallacies in his study. Confirmation bias comes to mind. http://cectic.com/049.html – Lagerbaer Apr 27 '11 at 14:49
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    We showed pretty conclusively that my shepherd simply recognized the sound of my car. The wife said he'd always get up and go to the door just a minute or so before I parked. However... I had the muffler repaired/replaced, and it took him the better part of a week to get used to the new sound! – M. Werner Apr 27 '11 at 14:57
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    Richard Wiseman addressed this[here](http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/psychicdogreply.pdf) – Monkey Tuesday Apr 27 '11 at 15:32
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    Why on earth does this have 2 downvotes? – Kit Sunde Apr 28 '11 at 00:26
  • @Kit that's a sign of separation anxiety, nothing psychic about it. My parents' dog had a severe case of that, he'd sit by the door whining even my father left the room to go to the toilet or grab something from the basement for a minute or less. Training and reinforcing healthy behaviour can help cure that. – jwenting Apr 28 '11 at 07:07
  • You should also look up the "clever Hans" effect. And you should watch some animal videos to see that animals different from us have natural skills that for us seem "impossible". Not just sensory, but also gauging perception and response time. It is hard for you to take part in the world as the dog perceive it. It could be anything related. It could be the radio next door having a distinct chime. We may not always be able to explain exactly HOW the dog appears to "know", but when properly blinded, the behavior disappears... – Tormod Apr 30 '11 at 08:41
  • There *is* talk about dogs being able to [detect epileptic fits](http://animals.howstuffworks.com/pets/dog-predict-seizure.htm) in advance – Benjol May 20 '11 at 10:27
  • Sheldrake is infamous for other discredited “research” as well. Although this doesn’t invalidate this particular work *per se*, it does seem to form a consistent pattern with him. – Konrad Rudolph May 20 '11 at 19:30
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    Since telepathy has never been shown to work, afaik, it would be surprising, if dogs could do it. However - wouldn't the idea of telepathy need a kind of sender, which informs the dod `I'm coming!`? – user unknown Jun 27 '11 at 20:31
  • @Kit Sunde:Please read the papers below. –  Apr 21 '13 at 18:08
  • Would be nice if people commenting would actually read the papers. Each of the following were extensively tested and ruled out: It happens on a schedule Dogs have excellent hearing Confirmation bias Separation anxiety –  Apr 24 '14 at 10:04

2 Answers2

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Telepathy is a throughly debunked idea. I'd even say foolish. The reasons this guy's dog knows he's coming home:

  • It happens on a schedule
  • Dogs have excellent hearing
  • Confirmation bias
  • Separation anxiety

That doesn't mean dogs are dumb. They are very smart (and cute). As Neil Degrasse Tyson found out on Nova Science Now. I would bet the owner just got fooled by his dog. Maybe in this case, the dog is smarter than the owner?

JasonR
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Skava
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    If you want to debunk something start by understanding the specific of the underlying debate. E.G. what experiment did Rupert Sheldrake conduct? What did Wiseman do? When you evoke hearing on an experiment that controlled against hearing you aren't adding anything to the debate. – Christian Jun 08 '11 at 21:49
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    I actually think this is a decent response. – Alain Jun 27 '11 at 16:42
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    Why do you link to an article by Sheldrake himself defending Telepathy against skepticism when claiming that telepathy is thoroughly debunked? – Lagerbaer Jul 28 '11 at 22:31
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    Your references aren't supporting what you are writing, and I think people are just up-voting this because they agree with it. The first reference is in defense of Sheldrake, and makes a case against Dawkins dogmatically blowing him off without arguing on the evidence. The second case just seem to generally be about dogs and seem unrelated. That makes this an unskeptical and poor answer. – Kit Sunde Oct 13 '11 at 18:56
  • @KitSunde Agreed. To Skava: you should quote the references, so that anyone can see easily why are you linking them and how they support your answer. – Suma Oct 13 '11 at 20:22
  • [...]yes that is exactly what I though before I actually read the book "Dogs that know when their owners are coming home" by Sheldrake. I also thought that it was just schedule, good hearing etc... But Sheldrake not being an idiot but being a scientist controlled for all of those things. He did multiple tests when he would contact owners to come home at a given random non-scheduled time. He also timed all the responses of the pets and found that many responded around 10 to 15 minutes before the owner actually got home. This is far before the owners vehicle/footsteps is within an audible range. –  Apr 21 '13 at 13:26
  • I feel like some mention of 'internal clocks' could be relevant. – Waterseas Apr 24 '14 at 20:19
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As the onlookers will see, noone here actually read the papers in question. Here they are:

A Dog That Seems to Know When His Owner Is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations : Rupert Sheldrake & Pamela Smart, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 233–255

CAN ANIMALS DETECT WHEN THEIR OWNERS ARE RETURNING HOME? AN EXPERIMENTAL TEST OF THE ‘PSYCHIC PET’ PHENOMENON : Richard Wiseman, Matthew Smith, Julie Milton, British Journal of Psychology Vol. 89, 1998, p.453-462

The claim is that Jaytee, the terrier of Pam Smart, is able to detect when owner Pamela Smart is on her return journey by waiting in his porch.

  • "It happens on a schedule": Both experimenters started on an random timepoint unknown to the ower Pam Smart. Ruled out.
  • "Dogs have excellent hearing": Both experimentersstarted the journey at least 13 minutes apart and used different, non-identifiable means of transportation (bike, taxi, experimenter car) Ruled out.
  • "Confirmation bias": Both experimenters videotaped the dog and tabulated the occurences of the porch with an observer who did not know the return time. Ruled out.
  • "Separation anxiety": Both authors took precautions to record how Jaytee behaves and if it is normal. Was taken care of and is therefore irrelevant.

What Sheldrake did:

Sheldrake recorded ca. 100 experiments, 12 under controlled conditions above, 10 control experiments and the rest under more natural conditions. Before the videotaped sessions, they analyzed written data recorded by Pam Smart over longer timeperiods.

Sheldrake tabulated Jaytees position and used two statistical methods. Sheldrake's main method divided the data in three categories, return period (Pam is on the way home), prereturn period (10 minutes before departure) and main period (all else). Jaytee was according to Sheldrake 55% the time at the window at the return period, 23% at the prereturn period and 4% average for the same 10 minute period at the main period. (The main period is much longer than return/prereturn so the missing 22% indicates that the main period was in average nearly 5 times longer ~ 50 min). Sheldrake used the repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and a paired-sample t-test to test if the differences were significant and they were according to Sheldrake highly significant (p < 0.0001, p. 239). The increased percentage of time was statistically significant for the prereturn period (p = 0.04) and highly significant for the difference between prereturn and return (p = 0.0009).

What Wiseman did:

Wiseman did 4 experiments. They divided the experiment time into 10 minute time blocks, Jaytee is only counted as success if

a) Jaytee goes to his porch only 10 minutes after the return signal.
b) Jaytee goes to his porch the first time for no apparent reason (must be decided by a judge).
c) In three cases, Jaytee must remain for at least 2 minutes.

  1. Leaving time: 21:00. Jaytee remains 53 seconds on 19:57, 134 seconds on 20:09 and over 600 seconds between 20:58 and 21:04 because a car pulls up. Fail. c) is introduced.
  2. Leaving time: 14:18.Jaytee remains 140 seconds on 13:59, and 169 seconds because the fish delivery van comes up. Fail.
  3. Leaving time: 21:39. Jaytee remains 1233 seconds after 21:31, but as this is too soon, it counts as fail.
  4. Leaving time: 10:45. Jaytee goes at 10:44, but as the terrier needs to vomit, he must leave the porch. Fail.

I leave it to the reader to decide it for themselves because I think it is such an extremely charged issue.

  • You misrepresent the 4% number, it means something different. And you completely ignored Richard Wiseman’s analysis of the results. – Konrad Rudolph Apr 21 '13 at 20:13
  • Please read Sheldrakes PDF. No fear, it is neither poisonous nor contagious. He explains in detail what he has done. –  Apr 21 '13 at 20:14
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    My comment was referring to *your answer* not Sheldrake’s paper. But of course Sheldrake’s analysis is flawed as well. He simply discards half the experiments. That invalidates the assumptions of a t-test. – Konrad Rudolph Apr 21 '13 at 20:17
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    Konrad, you evidently did not *read* beforehand Sheldrake because you have not corrected the misconceptions in Skavas answer and you did not find the 4% figure. Still you said it is flawed. And I sincerely doubt that you are able to read the paper in less than 4 minutes you fired your comments out. Again: please read the paper, make notices, build your argumentation and *then* comment. –  Apr 21 '13 at 20:27
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    Skava’s answer is old and I agree that it’s flawed. But others have pointed out the problems already, why should I do so again? Your answer on the other hand is new, pretty complete, but has some obvious flaws so I point these out. You are also assuming that I hadn’t read Sheldrake’s paper before (which, as it happens, is correct – I’m doing that now and getting dumber by the minute; but finding the context of the 4% figure was easy). – Konrad Rudolph Apr 21 '13 at 20:32
  • Corrected. I have now added the main results of the analysis section and you are right, I misrepresented the 4% figure. Sideline: Why do many creationists believe that evolution is wrong ? Because their environment says so: It is flawed, it is refuted. And because of this, they do not need to read the argument for evolution because they *trust* their peers. Now you admitted that you never read Sheldrake, but you *knew* that his research is flawed. Hmmm.... –  Apr 21 '13 at 21:19
  • let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/8447/discussion-between-thorsten-s-and-konrad-rudolph) –  Apr 21 '13 at 21:31
  • Sorry, can't chat, not enough rep, it seems.... –  Apr 21 '13 at 21:44
  • You should be fine at >100 reputation. Doesn’t matter, I have nothing more to criticise in the answer right now. Something else: I don’t say that I’ve never read Sheldrake, I had not read this paper exhaustively, but skimmed enough to find flaws. I’ve also read lots of other stuff by him that is flawed in similar ways. – Konrad Rudolph Apr 21 '13 at 21:56