> Sheldrake can surely not be the only academic interested in the matter.

"Interested" is not the same as "able to take time from one's career and seek financial support for research that is more likely to be denied funding, make one look foolish, sidetrack or derail one's career, and be misrepresented in the press while it's going on; than it is to lead to significant results that will prove one was an Einsteinian genius all along."

Twenty years ago Sheldrake suggested experiments which, he predicted, could "change the world." Two decades later, the world looks pretty much the same except for smart phones and the Net.

I don't know if anyone has carried out Sheldrake's experiments, but if they haven't it's because they don't see any future in them.

In the '80s a pair of very reputable scientists believed they had discovered a simple method of creating cold fusion energy. It would be super-cheap, probably safe, and virtually inexhaustible. The long-sought, theoretically plausible, Holy Grail.

When they published their findings, after enormous hype which they unfortunately encouraged, nobody could replicate the experiment, which looked increasingly flawed.

The upshot was that they were roundly ridiculed by late-night comedians and a few smartass colleagues. They didn't lose their jobs, but they were made to look like fools because their results could not be reliably repeated.

J.B. Rhine's ESP experiments at Duke University over forty years very occasionally yielded spectacular results. But nobody could replicate them, and it was shown how the handful of stupendously telepathic subjects could well have cheated.

Sheldrake's followers would have to prepare to martyr themselves for ideas that, at least in theory, are murkier and less plausible than was cold fusion and as unprovable as Rhine's supposed findings.