Exposing Scientific Dogmas - Banned TED Talk - Rupert Sheldrake

I recently met with Rupert in London in order to revive this banned Ted Talk from 10 years ago. We were initially going to re-record this presentation, but in the end, we decided that the original censored Ted Talk was more powerful. Please comment & share this video. If you want to learn more, check out Rupert Sheldrake's book, "The Science Delusion" and if you want to help create more videos like this, please consider supporting After Skool on Patreon. Thank you. www.patreon.com/AfterSkool

The phrase "It's science." Has become its own iron clad explanation. This is ironically used to stop people from questioning things. The antithesis of science.

Remember: Science as a method and science as an institution are two very different things. At some point, I'm going to make a video on this very topic, explaining in detail why that is so.

Science is not our deity, it is our collective knowledge of tangible things that we can presently perceive. It is an excellent tool for our prosperity, when accurate, but it is only ever a tool.

I remember listening to this talk. I cant believe they removed it. You can always tell who's in control by who you're not allowed to criticize.

Whether or not I agree with his personal theories, I absolutely appreciate the ability to listen and consider new perspectives

Dogmatic thinking is the problem, whether science or religion. Humans want definite answers to speculative questions, without having to think, or do any of the hard work necessary to make thinking productive.

"Give us one free miracle and we will figure out the rest" Thats a good one tbh 😅

The use of science as a weapon to prevent inquiry has always struck me as the most back-asswards bastardization of a system for the sake of securing both funds and egos that I’ve ever seen.

As a STEM graduate, one of the first things i was taught was to never take a fact at face value without first looking at the evidence and the methods by which it was gathered. Sadly many scientists prefer not to do that.

I'd firstly like to preface that this video isn't necessarily a bad one. As a researcher, I agree pop science spins these overly simplistic and wrong conclusions about the philosophy of science as well as the methods/discoveries. Science communication is very difficult and people should question this and our current results. However, the speaker is doing the exact same thing he is criticizing. Being overly reductive (multiple times with the big bang while not digging deeper), putting forth fringe or tenuous explanations as true (crystal memory is not really memory. It is nucleation, a concept from general chemistry), and prefacing to a nebulous "evidence" for said explanations. There is something to be said for actively questioning our current understanding. This is a basis of everyone's research, to varying degrees. For instance, with the speed of light supposedly changing, part of it is due to different observation methods that may have other sources of error or phenomena that change results. We do currently research the disparity in calculations of the speed of light. It's one of the biggest open problems in cosmology that we ACTIVELY RESEARCH IN COSMOLOGY. The fact the speaker went to a scientist not in this field of research and immediately takes his word and extrapolates it to all scientists is rather reductive. I don't believe the speaker has truly questioned these hypotheses without checking his biases. He stops at a shoddy explanation from a non-expert and then places that explanation on science. This is going halfway with your inquiries! You should push further, you should work with the experts and bring questions! But don't stop at one bad explanation or one non-expert. The first thing us researchers do when studying a problem is to see if anyone's studied or solved it before. The speaker has not done this effectively. Regardless, I beg of people here to watch other videos on this topic. A great starting point would be from @acollierastro. She makes great videos on similar topics. I hope everyone here has a fantastic day and keeps questioning about our own knowledge. Science should be a collaboration for everyone, not just researchers.

I'd like to see examples for each time he says "in fact there's a great deal of evidence" or similar phrases.

In my experience in college and having to work in departments that call themselves a science, I have personally experienced that academics are some of the most closed minded and dogmatic individuals who are so disconnected from the world and other people within it, and are so certain that they know the answer to everything, despite the scientific method being a philosophical method of enquiry, discovery, but not certainty

EVERY time someone says you can’t question something, they’re probably trying to protect their own power and not let you threaten it.

Questioning our scientific understanding is perfectly healthy but there is a fine line between questioning normally and questioning too much to the point where we have no common ground to understand new ideas

Crazy that the speed of light changed coincidentally with the evolution of better tools to measure it more accurately, cause it's so easy to measure perfectly accurately ya know

I'm not on board with his hypotheses, but he is asking the right questions. That's the whole point of science: question everything.

The speed of light being a constant has to do with relativity. No matter what speed and direction one is going you will measure C to be the same thing. The idea that people using people-made equipment and techniques to try to measure something precisely, and that measurement changing over time, is very common in science. The measured mass of the proton has also been updated recently. Its common knowledge that C varies depending on the medium- C as we try to measure it is in a vacuum, and in reality a vacuum still has a lot going on so even this measurement has some wiggle room (its quantum mechanics, in the end there is always wiggle room. And yes, physicists know this but it is easier to use the best average which has worked well enough to give us things like smart phones and GPS). On the subject of the meter: a meter is an arbitrary unit of measurement, a human made concept. C is used because it is easily and consistently measured, as opposed to trying to machine a material to a length or some other method. If we find that we measure C more accurately our standard of the meter length will change- if the new measurement of C blows up the meter we can revert to a different standard. Weights and measures are arbitrary human constructs. As mentioned elsewhere, we are in the gravity well of other bodies of the solar system as well as the simple fact that our understanding of gravity is that it is caused by mass. The reality is the more accurately we can measure it the more other factors will affect our measurements. The planets have enough gravitational influence to move the Sun around! Lastly, the Big Bang doesn't state something came from nothing, it states that at a certain point we can't see any further back in history. Who knows, we may discover that with newer more powerful telescopes that our current observations don't tell the whole story and Big Bang will get scrapped.

Even as a child, instinctively, I knew to question science. 🤨

I think there are many mysteries associated with the behaviour of animals. They have senses, often far more acute than ours. They may have senses we are entirely unaware of.