By Deepak Chopra, MD. FACP, Stuart Hameroff, MD, Menas C. Kafatos, Ph.D., Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., and Neil Theise, MD
Huffington Post
April 18, 2013
thanks to nhne-pulse.org for the find
One of modern science’s great strengths is that any questionable finding dies a quick death if it’s invalid. The safeguards are mainly two: Your new finding must be repeatable when other researchers run the same experiments, and peer review by qualified scientists subjects every new finding to microscopic scrutiny. So it surprised the millions of admirers of TED, whose conferences attract wide attention to new, cutting-edge ideas, when that organization decided to practice semi-censorship.
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What the militant atheists and self-described skeptics hate is a certain brand of magical thinking that endangers science. In particular, there is the bugaboo of “non-local consciousness,” which causes the hair on the back of their necks to stand on end. A layman would be forgiven for not grasping why such an innocent-sounding phrase could spell danger to “good science.”
The reason becomes clear when you discover that non-local consciousness means the possibility that there is mind outside the human brain or even outside material reality, that a conscious mind is in some way intrinsic to the quantum universe, and that we all are quantum entangled. One of us (Menas Kafatos) has devoted many years of research on the connection of quantum theory to consciousness. Four of us (Stuart Hameroff, Rudolph Tanzi, Neil Thiese, and Deepak Chopra) have devoted years of research to neuroscience, clinical studies and consciousness.
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Anderson’s letter is cautiously couched on the one hand — he takes pains to divorce his warnings from outright bans and acknowledges that the dividing line between real science and pseudoscience is hardly sharp and clear. But the dose of cold water is frigid enough, since his red-flag subjects include “healing” of any kind (his quotation marks) and using neuroscience to explain various mind-body puzzles (“a lot of goofballs” inhabit this area).
TED finds itself on the wrong side of censorship, semi- or not. But this fracas actually opens a window. The general public — and many working scientists — isn’t aware that consciousness has become a hot topic spanning many disciplines, and its acceptability is demarked by age. Older, established scientists tend to be dead set against it, while younger, upcoming scientists are fascinated. There are any number of books on “the conscious universe.” There are peer-reviewed journals on consciousness and worldwide conferences on how to link mind and brain (the so-called “hard problem”).
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Freedom of thought is going to win out, and certainly TED must be shocked by the avalanche of disapproval Anderson’s letter has met with. The real grievance here isn’t about intellectual freedom but the success of militant atheists at quashing anyone who disagrees with them. Their common tactic is scorn, ridicule, and contempt. The most prominent leaders, especially Richard Dawkins, refuse to debate on any serious grounds, and indeed they show almost total ignorance of the cutting-edge biology and physics that has admitted consciousness back into “good science.”
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One of the authors of this article (Stuart Hameroff) recently gave a TEDx talk in Tucson where he made the point that critics of the possibility of consciousness outside the brain cannot explain consciousness inside the brain. While neuroscience is at a loss, the notion of consciousness being based on finer scale, deeper order quantum effects in microtubules inside brain neurons (the Penrose-Hameroff ‘Orch OR model) has been boosted by recent discoveries of quantum resonances in microtubules, and anesthetic action on microtubules. Quantum entanglement could account for Rupert Sheldrake’s findings, and consciousness occurring outside the brain. Stuart Hameroff’s TEDx talk ‘The future of consciousness’ explains how this can scientifically happen. Should it be censored also?
But the main flaw in TED’s position has been made abundantly clear. It isn’t the organizers’ job to exclude questionable science but a job shared between them and the audience. We’re all adults here, right? Any speculative thinking worthy of the name should make somebody in the audience angry, inspire others, and leave the rest to decide if a challenging idea should be thrown out or not. Any other approach casts shame upon tolerance, imagination, and science itself.
Signed,
Deepak Chopra, MD. FACP, ChopraFoundation.org
Stuart Hameroff, MD, Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychology, Director, Center for Consciousness Studies, The University of Arizona, quantumconsciousness.org
Menas C. Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Director, Center of Excellence, Chapman University, [email protected]
Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital
Neil Theise, MD, Professor, Pathology and Medicine, (Division of Digestive Diseases) Beth Israel Medical Center — Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, neiltheise.com
nhne-pulse.org/ted-censors-alternative-speakers
