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E-SKEPTIC MAGAZINE FOR FEBRUARY 14, 2001
Copyright 2001 Skeptic magazine, Skeptics Society, Michael Shermer
Permission to print or distribute without permission.
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In this issue of e-Skeptic:
PSYCHIC PARROT
RANDI IN NEW YORK TIMES
PRIORITIES FOR HEALTH
THE HEART AS A BRAIN
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PSYCHIC PARROT
I just filmed a short interview for Wednesday morning (February 15) on ABC's
Good Morning America on N'Kisi, the psychic parrot, a Congo African gray
parrot who Cambridge University biologist Rupert Sheldrake says is additional
evidence for his theory of morphic resonance, a sort of "force" that pervades
the cosmos and allows everything to "remember." N'Kisi's owner, Aimee Morgana
of Manhattan, read Sheldrake's latest book, "Dogs That Know When Their Owners
Are Coming Home and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals," and sent him videos
of her amazing Parrot. N'Kisi, she claims, has a vocabulary of 560 words,
which the parrot repeats with such frequency that occasionally the very
thoughts that Morgana has, by chance match the words being parroted by the
parrot. Of course, that's not how Morgana or Sheldrake see it, so they ran an
experiment in which N'Kisi got 32 correct hits out of 123 trials, which,
Sheldrake says, is a one in a billion probability of happening by chance;
ergo, the parrot is psychic.
I pointed out that N'Kisi missed 91 times, which doesn't sound all that
impressive to me, not to mention the protocol for determining what
constitutes a hit was rather fuzzy. For example, Morgana was looking at a
photograph of a couple embracing, and N'Kisi allegedly says "Can I give you a
hug?" THAT was counted as a hit. Of course, we are not told how often N'Kisi
blurts out that particular phrase, or other phrases for that matter, nor how
many different photos were used by which Sheldrake arrived at his billion to
one odds calculation. One reporter who visited N'Kisi had recently lost her
cat. When she met the parrot, it apparently blurted out "Remember the cat?"
Of course, we are not told what else the parrot said, or what else the
reporter was thinking that day.
In other words, the sum of the coincidences equals certainty. Plus, this all
sounds like a case of "remember the hits, forget the misses." In science we
have to consider the misses as well as the hits. As Frank Sulloways likes to
say, "anecdotes to not make a science."
Check it out Wednesday morning, February 15, on ABC's Good Morning America,
possibly the first hour they said.
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RANDI IN NEW YORK TIMES ON SATURDAY
I gave a short interview today to the New York Times for a piece they are
doing on James Randi and the power of belief. I was unable to glean if it was
to be a light and positive piece, or whether they are going to be critical,
so check it out. The reporter said it would probably run on Saturday.
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PRIORITIES FOR HEALTH
The theme of the current issue of Priorities for Health
http://acsh.org/publications/priorities/current.html is pseudoscience.
This double issue includes articles on hair analysis, "junk nursing
science," so-called repressed memory therapy, and "voodoo science"
treatments for autism. Lessons from this issue include: (a) junk science:
not necessarily junk nor science, (b) facilitated communication: doesn't
reliably facilitate communication, and (c) alleged repressed memories:
can become irrepressible. Discuss amongst yourselves at
http://acsh.org/forum/altmed/altmed.html
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BRAIN IN HEART
Speaking of Rupert Sheldrake and weird biology, this from our friends at the
Front Range Skeptics, Linda and Emily Rosa and Larry Sarner:
I couldn't believe it! On the ABC Evening News tonight, Deborah Amos had a
feature story endorsing "Heart Math" -- one of the kookiest movements of all
time! It's also
referred to as "energy cardiology."
Heart Math folk believe the heart is another brain, capable of independent
thought -- a powerful, supernatural organ responsible for telekenesis, etc.
Amos showed the lighter side of Heart Math, but promoted research that
claims to show Heart Math's therapeutic value in controlling stress, heart
disease and diabetes. School children were shown doing Heart Math
meditation exercises. A doctor specializing in Heart Math is now available
at abc.com for consultation.
http://www.heartmath.org/
http://www.creativespirit.net/henryreed/study_intuition/library/Article34a.htm
http://www.usneighbor.org/business/article-stress.htm
http://www.drlark.com/pages/heart_anger.php
http://www.creativespirit.net/henryreed/bookreviews/4book9808.htm
Discover Your Heart's Awareness
Experiments at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory
reveal human-machine interactions suggestive of a mind-over-matter, or
psychokinetic (PK), influence. Subjects people who attempt to mentally
control the machinery have less success, however, than those who make a
heartfelt connection with the machinery as if it were a living being, and
dialogue with it, asking it for the favor of its compliance. This finding
is one of the ways that Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., in his book, The Heart's
Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of our Heart Energy (Broadway Books)
shares an important new perspective on the intelligent awareness of the
heart.
We are familiar with the imaginative powers of the "right brain" versus the
pedestrian thought patterns of the "left brain." Pearsall introduces us to
the even more revolutionary contrast between the lonely, separatist
consciousness of the brain versus the spiritual, humanitarian oneness
awareness of the heart. He likens the heart to the sun and the brain to the
earth. We once thought that the sun revolved around the earth, but the
Copernican revolution reversed that view. A similar revolution is taking
place concerning the relative importance of brain and heart.
It was Arizona University's Gary E. Schwartz, M.D. who pioneered the field
of "energy cardiology." He found that while brain waves (EEG) are weak and
localized around the head, heart waves (EKG) are the body's strongest
electromagnetic signal. Whereas it has been previously thought that the
brain controlled the heart, through the autonomic nervous system,
Schwartz's work led to the discovery that through the circulatory system,
which is more pervasive than the nervous system, the heart has even greater
control over the brain than vice-versa. Researchers at the Heart-Math
Institute like to point out, for
example, that it is difficult to quiet the mind when the brain seems to
keep pumping out thoughts. However, if you focus an attitude of gratitude
through the heart, the brain quiets down. Try it and you'll see. The heart
can control the brain when the brain can't control itself.
A finding of energy cardiology is that cells store info-energy as cellular
memory. The heart regulates the use of the energy in these memories. Heart
transplant recipients, for example, often have memories and personality
tendencies belonging to their heart donors.
Pearsall suggests that energy cardiology provides a new basis for the
mind-body connection. The heart may provide the link between subtle energy
and physical effects. For example, as already mentioned, PK effects are
greater when there is a heart connection. Similarly, when spiritual healing
is approached as a mechanical exercise, the effect is not as strong as when
there is a heart connection between healer and patient. Research at the
Heart-Math Institute shows that the EKGs of the two parties involved become
in synchrony, and the patient begins to resonate with the healer's
info-energy. A similar effect had been shown in the past with brain waves,
but now it appears that the underlying cause of the brain wave
synchronization is the resonance of the heart connection.
Another tenet of energy cardiology is the spiritual dimension. The heart is
associated with love and our connections with others. While the brain is
satisfied being a hermit, the heart is a herd animal and profits from being
able to resonate with other hearts. Pearsall makes a case that for a
healthy heart it is more important who you eat with than what you eat. He
even suggests that the heart may be the seat of telepathy, because heart
waves have a non-local (aka "psychic") omnipresent existence perceptible by
hearts everywhere, making "heart connections" a psychic reality.
My own research combining spiritual development work with psychic training
has born out this conjecture. In our "Intuitive Heart" training, we find
that when people make heart connections with one another, there is an
intuitive, empathic understanding between the two. This intuitive empathy
can be easily demonstrated via a simple form of giving a "psychic reading."
One form of psychic reading involves heartfelt cellular memories described
by Pearsall. Cayce suggested that the best advice we can give another is to
speak from our own experience. In an Intuitive Heart reading, one person
holds a question or concern secretly in the heart. The other person, acting
as the helper, makes a heart connection with the seeker, and prays that a
personal memory will come forward into the helper's mind that will prove
helpful to the seeker. The helper then tells this memory, and explores the
lesson suggested by this experience. People usually find that the memory
and its lesson prove to be very relevant for the seeker. Pearsall would say
that the seeker's question created info-energy that stimulated a
counter-balancing memory dormant within the cells of the helper.