Discovery Lab Answers

Rupert Sheldrake, PhD

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and independent researcher whose empirical work has focused on anomalous cognition in humans and animals. His systematic investigations have centered on two main areas: the sense of being stared at (scopaesthesia) and telephone telepathy — testing whether people can anticipate incoming calls from known contacts.

Staring detection and the sense of being stared at

Sheldrake’s work on staring detection challenged the long-standing dismissal of the “sense of being stared at” as mere psychological illusion. Rather than treating it as coincidence or misattribution, he developed systematic experimental protocols to test whether humans possess a genuine capacity to detect when someone is directing visual attention toward them. This line of research has become one of his signature contributions to anomalous cognition research.

More recently, Sheldrake and Pam Smart (2024) expanded this inquiry to include whether the phenomenon extends to waking sleeping people and non-human animals by staring. Their analysis drew on a database of reported cases across four categories of waking by looks, examining both human and animal accounts ^[4]. They also explored potential neurobiological mechanisms, including the role of the superior colliculus in detecting stares, and noted that involvement in dreaming may inhibit its responsiveness to the detection of staring.

Telephone telepathy and automated testing

Sheldrake developed a series of automated, internet-based experimental protocols to test whether people can anticipate incoming telephone calls, emails, and text messages from known contacts. These methods allow large-scale, unsupervised data collection while maintaining randomization and reducing experimenter bias.

In 2024, Sheldrake and Tom Stedall compared four new automated tests for telephone telepathy ^[3]. The experiments varied in design: some used continuous connection between participant and callers, while others used randomized caller selection. Results across the four experiments showed variation — some yielded hit rates above 50%, while others approached chance levels, suggesting that procedural differences and participant selection may influence outcomes.

A comprehensive meta-analysis by Sheldrake, Stedall, and Patrizio E. Tressoldi (2025) synthesized 26 experiments on telecommunication telepathy ^[2]. The analysis found that results under telepathic conditions were “very significant above chance level” (p = 1×10⁻⁷), with selected participants (those pre-identified as potentially gifted) showing significantly higher hit rates than unselected participants. By contrast, in tests carried out under precognitive conditions, hit rates were at chance. The meta-analysis reported no significant difference between results from Sheldrake and colleagues and independent replications.

Morphic resonance and anomalous learning

Sheldrake has long proposed the hypothesis of morphic resonance — the idea that self-organizing systems inherit patterns of organization and behavior through morphogenetic fields. In 2026, Black, Butzer, and Sheldrake published “Memory Within Nature: A Study of Morphic Resonance Predictions on Learning” ^[1], which tested whether morphic resonance might explain learning patterns. The paper discussed experimental limitations, including the possibility that resonance signals may be too weak to detect in small-scale studies, and explored distinctions between morphic resonance (described as a bulk effect often involving strangers) and telepathy (typically occurring between closely bonded people).