IUBio

Royal Mail's Nobel guru in telepathy row

Michael Painter m.painter at worldnet.att.net
Thu Oct 11 13:11:58 EST 2001


"Michael Jameson" <m.jameson at hunterlink.net.au> wrote in message
news:3BC57FBC.7C836763 at hunterlink.net.au...
> Royal Mail's Nobel guru in telepathy row
>
> Robin McKie, science editor
> Sunday September 30, 2001
> The Observer
>
> It was meant to be a simple celebration of the world's greatest
> intellectual prize. But this week's issue of six special stamps to
> honour the 100th anniversary of the Nobel prize has dropped the Royal
> Mail into an unexpected, and decidedly bitter, scientific row.
>
> Scientists are furious that a booklet, published as part of the stamps'
> presentation package, contains claims that modern physics will one day
> lead to an understanding of telepathy and the paranormal.
>
> 'It is utter rubbish,' said David Deutsch, quantum physics expert at
> Oxford University. 'Telepathy simply does not exist. The Royal Mail has
> let itself be hoodwinked into supporting ideas that are complete
> nonsense.'
>
> Last week Royal Mail officials defended their actions by pointing out
> that the offending paragraphs had been written by a Nobel laureate,
> Cambridge physicist Brian Josephson. 'Yes, I think telepathy exists,' he
> told The Observer, 'and I think quantum physics will help us understand
> its basic properties.'
>
> Professor Josephson won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1973 for proving
> that some materials could act as switches operating close to the speed
> of light, and could revolutionise computing and power transmission. He
> said he had deliberately used the booklet to redress a serious imbalance
> in reporting paranormal research work. 'I think journals like Nature and
> Science are censoring such research,' he said. 'There is a lot of
> evidence to support the existence of telepathy, for example, but papers
> on the subject are being rejected - quite unfairly.'
>
> Josephson believes that psychics and telepaths may be able to direct
> random energy at sub-atomic levels for their own purposes, and in the
> commemorative stamp booklet writes that developments in information and
> quantum theories 'may lead to an explanation of processes still not
> understood within conventional science, such as telepathy'.
>
> Full text -
> http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,560604,00.html
>

Newton was a nut also.
Read the whole article to see what others think about this.





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