The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science (41 page)

A small number of academics believe that searching the brain for consciousness is akin to watching a television show and then hunting in its circuit boards for the presenters. For them, consciousness exists on an external field and our brains
interact
with it, a little like how the eye and our various visual processing areas interact with electrical impulses that are
out there
to create vision. That is why ‘the hard problem’ is proving to be so hard: because we have been looking in the wrong place.

If there is even a remote chance that this is true, then there is also a chance that Sheldrake and his fellow parapsychologists might be right. Because if such a crucial component of mind can be
out there
, then it theoretically might be able to interact with other minds that are also out there.

What is required is a referee. Someone who knows brains, is widely recognised as brilliant and yet has a foot in neither the Sheldrake nor the Wiseman camp. I decide to contact American neuroscientist Professor David Eagleman. Well known for his research into how the brain processes time, he has been profiled in the
New Yorker
and described as a ‘genius’ by the
Observer
; he calls himself a ‘Possibilian’, rejecting certainty in science as an ‘absurd’ position. But this is no anti-materialist. On the contrary, Eagleman is a disciple of Sheldrake’s arch-materialist foe Francis Crick, and says that he spent all of his ‘intellectual time’ with him during his postdoctoral studies.

When I phone Eagleman, he is airport-bound, in the back of a New York taxi. After a quick preamble, and entirely without warning, I ask him this most dangerous of questions, the one on whose answer hangs our very concept of what a human being actually is. Is it possible that consciousness might exist outside the brain, perhaps as a kind of field?

There’s a long, tantalising pause. ‘Um … Ah …’ Another silence. ‘Here’s what I think. I think it’s … I think … I have to be very careful what I say. Okay. It’s absolutely poss— er … let me back up a minute.’

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I understand that this is a controversial area.’

‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘Well, the idea of materialism is that we’re nothing but pieces and parts. So if you put all those pieces and parts together, then you get consciousness. But we don’t actually know that that’s the right answer. We just assume it is. And it’s probably an okay strategy to burn up a generation doing that because you have to get all the way to the end of a problem to see if you get stuck or if there’s a solution. But it is perfectly possible that materialism will not be a solution and that our science is too young to recognise something else that’s going on. So I think it’s appropriate to have some intellectual humility and scepticism about whether our current physics and biology are sufficient.’

‘Wow,’ I say. ‘I really didn’t think you were going to say that.’

‘I wouldn’t want to get quoted saying that I support Sheldrake’s theories, because I’m not familiar with them,’ he says. ‘But I’m a supporter of people proposing wacky ideas because every single major
advance started off as a wacky idea. We’re at a very young period in our science right now. We need ideas. What doesn’t make sense is to pretend that we know the answers and to act as if we’re certain that materialism is going to bring us all the way home, because we have no guarantee of that.’

Of course, we must remember that Eagleman’s admission doesn’t mean that Sheldrake is right. Science still moves slowly, carefully and by a unique mode of bickering and begrudging nearly-consensus, as it should. And Sheldrake has his own coherence problem – his results tend to be far more significant than those of other parapsychologists, and they are not consistently replicated.

By the end of it all, though, I am reminded of the way that I felt about UFOs. Back then, no matter how powerful the arguments I heard, no matter how much I realised, rationally, that I should at least accept the possibility of alien space travel, I could not. My unconscious had made a decision. It would not be shifted. And once again, on the question of telepathy, it is broadcasting a great, dark lump of no. I am no less prejudiced than David Irving and the materialist Skeptics: no evidence could ever be good enough. My position is surely deeply unfair. But, still. There it is.

But I
am
less sure. A new grey space has been nudged between the black and the white. And it is invigorating to have some mystery back. It feels wonderful to have doubt.

And I have new doubts, too, that lie beyond the slender limits of telepathy. Sheldrake defended himself easily against many of Wiseman’s attacks. It was the opposite experience from that which I had been led to expect.

So, what about this James Randi? Could Sheldrake’s criticisms of him also be worth hearing? I have had a long-suppressed intuition, bulging and pleading to be noticed, that says there is something unsavoury about the so-called ‘patron saint of the Skeptics.’ Back at the anti-homeopathy gathering in Manchester, though, I had decided that my feelings on this matter were not to be trusted. They were emotional, not based on evidence,
irrational
. I accepted this in the spirit that I tend to accept most criticism; my scolders are right because
of course they are right
. The naughty boy,
the thief, the failure, the terrified, obsessive lover. Wrongness is the story of my life.

But since then, I have learned that hunches can be the result of intelligent calculations. Often, they can be right. I begin to wonder about this ‘strange story’ about ‘a previous encounter’ with Sheldrake that Randi wrote of on his website. Could there actually be grounds for Sheldrake’s calling this icon of reason ‘a liar?’ What happened between them? Could the silent warning song of my unconscious actually, for once, be true?

Everybody loves James Randi. He is a genius. He is an icon. He is truth’s war dog and has been feasting on the feet of the deluded and the dishonest for longer than many of us have been alive.
Wired
magazine says that ‘he knows more
about the workings of science than half the PhDs in America.’
Richard Dawkins has given him a ‘Richard Dawkins award’
and
hosted sell-out thousand-dollar-a-head fundraising dinners
for his educational foundation.
Celebrity magicians Penn and Teller call him
‘our inspiration, our hero, our mentor and our friend.’ Professor Richard
Wiseman credits his 1982 book
Flim Flam
as having a ‘huge impact’ on him, with its ‘hardline approach’ that assumed that ‘none of it is true.’
The former editor of
The Skeptic
magazine says
, ‘He has done more to promote scepticism worldwide than any living individual. And any dead individual as well.’
The founding editor of the US edition has called him
‘the pioneer of the skeptical movement.’
The
New York Times
has described him as
our ‘most celebrated living debunker.’
Isaac Asimov has said
, ‘His qualifications as a rational human being are unparalleled.’
Sir John Maddox, the former editor of the world-prestigious science journal
Nature
, has said, ‘I don’t know what his IQ is, but I’m sure it’s off the scale.’

And a man who claims to have met a psychic dog says that he is a liar.

It does not seem possible that Dr Rupert Sheldrake can be right. For one thing, Randi’s boosters are known for their cautious and critical evidence-based thinking. When I was among the Skeptics in Manchester, I wondered how they felt about their own susceptibility to
the biases that twist the perspectives of ordinary people. Michael Marshall, who helped organise the conference, told me that their natural inclination for questioning and analysis gave them an ‘inoculation against dogma.’ Skeptic celebrity Dr Steven Novella, a senior fellow at the James Randi Educational Foundation, said, ‘The reason why scepticism is incompatible with dogma and ideology is, it’s very anti-dogmatic and anti-ideological at its core.’

Hearing all that, it would seem abundantly unlikely that
the man the Skeptics exalt as their ‘patron saint’
is a liar. But this is what Sheldrake claims. He says that Randi has a history of behaving in exactly the way that he so aggressively abhors in others – that he is a showman, who lies in service of his celebrity. The Skeptics do not accept this, Sheldrake says, because they are blinded by the biases from which they claim immunity.

I am not sure what to think. I mean, look at the facts – at that glistered register of acolytes: Dawkins, Wiseman, Novella, Maddox, the
New York Times
. The forces ranged against Sheldrake could hardly be more impressive. I cannot find a senior scientist or mainstream publication that has anything negative to say about Randi – or much positive about Sheldrake. There is a consensus here. And it is not singing the favours of the psychic dog man.

But what of my biases? My problem is, I
liked
Sheldrake. I did so for the same reason that I felt a warming attraction to Harvard’s UFO professor, John Mack. They are fascinating minds, troublemakers,
heretics
. Their beliefs glitter and pulse and enchant. Wiseman was likeable and funny, yes, but he was the holder of the glitter-extinguisher. He was teacher. He was
Dad
.

I used to imagine that our biases and delusions existed on a layer above a solid and clear-sighted base. Beneath your mistakes, I thought, there is your human nature, which is rational and immovable and seeks only truth. If you came to suspect that you were in error, you could easily work your way back to sense. What I now know is that there
is
no solid base. The machine by which we experience the world is the thing that becomes distorted. And so it is impossible to watch ourselves falling into fallacy. We can be lost without knowing we are lost. And, usually, we are.

But if this is true for me, then surely it is true for everyone, no matter how publicly they declare themselves to be ‘free’ or ‘rational’ or ‘critical’ thinkers. Can anyone really be immune? What about Randi? I am suspicious of the coherence of his beliefs, which seem to be held with such a severe level of vehemence that no room is left for doubt. But even so, can Sheldrake possibly be correct? It would be testament, indeed, to humanity’s powers of self-deception if the Skeptics, of all people, could be shown to have unquestioningly installed a liar as their leader. But it would be telling, too, if it turns out that Sheldrake is wrong. It would say much about the truth-finding power of consensus and the deceptive energies in Sheldrake’s brain which have led him to unfairly malign a man who is a hero, and not an enemy, of science.

I start by reading and comparing the various life stories of Randall James Hamilton Zwinge has recounted in interviews that he has given to the media over the years. The stories that have been reported are astonishing.

James Randi was born an illegitimate
‘genius or near genius’
on 7 August 1928.
A child prodigy
with an
IQ of 168
, he spent his leisure time pursuing personal projects, such as
making photo-electric cells
and doing
chemistry experiments in his basement
.
By the age of eight he was arguing with other children
about the existence of Santa Claus. By nine, he had
invented a pop-up toaster
. Canadian officials decided that he was
too intelligent to benefit from school
, so he was given a special pass that said he did not have to attend. Instead, he educated himself in the Toronto Public Library and the Royal Ontario Museum where, by the age of twelve, he had taught himself
geography, history
,
astronomy
,
calculus
, psychology, science, mathematics and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Randi was
fifteen when he committed his first public debunking
. He claims that his exposé of a ruse at a local Spiritualist church, the ‘Assembly of Inspired Thought’, led to his dramatic arrest.
At seventeen
he had a bicycle accident in which his back was broken. He spent thirteen months in a body-cast, using the time to teach himself the skills in magic and lock-breaking that would be essential to future work in conjuring and escapology. He confounded his doctors, who told him that he would never walk again
(or, in a later account, walk
straight
again)
.

Still seventeen, he was back at school – Toronto’s Oakwood Collegiate Institute – where he
achieved ‘mediocre’ results
, but only because he chose not to apply himself. He brought his first exam to a premature finish by writing beneath a question
‘This is a premise I cannot support
,
signed Randall James Hamilton Zwinge’
and walking out,
refusing to take any more tests
.

Still seventeen, he joined Peter March’s Travelling Circus
and began performing in a turban as a wizard named Prince Ibis.
Still
seventeen (he did a lot when he was seventeen),
he took a job writing newspaper horoscopes
as an ‘experiment’, in which he wanted see how easy it was to dupe the public with paranormal claims. That came to a dramatic end when he
saw two office workers
(or, in another account,
two prostitutes
) reading his column. When the office workers/prostitutes (or, in a third account,
a waitress
) told him that they took his astrological predictions seriously, he was so disgusted that he resigned, vowing never again to pose as having supernatural abilities. (In yet another contradictory account, this crucial, life-changing resignation came about when he was asked to use his telepathic powers to find a lost child.)
‘I could not live with that kind of lie
. So I went back to the rabbits and the handkerchiefs.’

Whether it was horoscope- or lost-child-related, Randi retired his psychic pretence when he was seventeen. At least that’s what I thought, until I read an article in the
Toronto Evening Telegram
which reported that he first realised he had ESP aged nine and that he would
habitually pick up the telephone before it rang
because he ‘sensed’ that someone had dialled his number. In a follow-up article, he claimed:
‘Certain perceptions have been given me
and I have improved them by deep study of the science of mental telepathy and clairvoyance.’ The headline was ‘He Sees the Future’. Randi was twenty-two.