Previous |
Next |
September 5, 2006, 03:55 PM ET
Testing 'Telephone Telepathy'
A British scientist says he has proved the existence of “telephone telepathy”—a phenomenon experienced, he says, by anyone who has ever gotten a phone call shortly after thinking about the caller.
Rupert Sheldrake—whose research was financially supported by Trinity College, in Cambridge, England, according to Reuters—asked test subjects to provide the names and phone numbers of four friends. Those friends were then contacted at random and asked to call the subject who had named them. Before answering, the subject was told to guess which of the four candidates was calling. Nearly half the time, Mr. Sheldrake says, his subjects were able to identify their mystery callers.
Mr. Sheldrake says he’s observed the same phenomenon with e-mail. But some scientists are a bit skeptical: The trial sizes in both the phone and e-mail experiments were fairly small, and only a handful of subjects were actually filmed testing their telepathic powers. —Brock Read
Each day on Wired Campus, The Chronicle's technology reporters highlight key IT developments and put them in perspective.
Add Your Comment
Commenting is closed.