CAN you tell when somebody is staring at you? The biologist and author Rupert
Sheldrake believes you can, and that in some people this sixth sense is much
more developed than in others. What鈥檚 more, he says he can prove it.
The trick is to come up with a repeatable experiment that produces
unequivocal results鈥攏ot an easy task. But Sheldrake says he has developed
such an experiment which involves deciding whether or not somebody is staring at
you during a short trial period. The test is simple enough for you to try at
home.
The experiment is carefully constructed to prevent the subjects communicating
using conventional senses. To eliminate the possibility that sound or smell
could influence the result, he separates the subject from the starer with a
window (one sits inside with the other outside). So that there can be no
peeking, the person being stared at must face away from the starer and wear a
blindfold. In addition, the starer decides to stare or not stare during each
trial using random number tables.
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The results are persuasive. By sheer chance, subjects should guess correctly
50 per cent of the time. But Sheldrake says that the success rate in his
experiment is higher than this. The fact that he has carried out the test
thousands of times gives powerful statistical backing to his claim.
Just as with any other human ability, some people turn out to be much better
at staring or being stared at than others. Some individuals have a success rate
approaching 90 per cent. But critics say that these 鈥渉igh performers鈥� could skew
the results. So Sheldrake has reanalysed his data using a statistical technique
that ignores the exact score and counts only whether people have scored above,
equal to, or below 50 per cent. This strips out the impact of high performers.
To the surprise of the critics, the result is the same. 鈥淓veryone who has seen
the data agrees there is an effect,鈥� says Sheldrake.
A closer look at the results reveals another trend. Sheldrake has found that
the success rate when the subjects are not being stared at is no better than 50
per cent. But when people are being stared at, the success rate is significantly
higher.
This is just what you would expect, he argues. 鈥淚n the no-looking trials, you
are asking people to spot the absence of an effect. This is obviously much more
difficult than spotting the effect itself.鈥�
So what is this mysterious effect and how does it work? Sheldrake has his own
ideas that have generated considerable controversy among mainstream scientists.
He believes that the act of looking generates a field that the subject can
detect. 鈥淚n 20th-century physics, the fact that the observer and the observed
are linked is well established. But in biology this is heresy.鈥�
As more trials are carried out, Sheldrake says the empirical results just get
stronger, and he hopes scientists and lay people alike will try the experiment
for themselves. 鈥淣obody need take my word for it.鈥�