Rupert Sheldrake slams entire swaths of Wikipedia as being woefully controlled by unchecked anonymous cabals

Character Attacks, Wikipedia Corruption, Science Cabal
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um I'd like to talk about morphic residence if we could Yeah Um it's been
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50 years since you first came up with that hypothesis Has it been 50 years Yeah Wow Well I
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first thought of it in 1973 when I was working in Cambridge I didn't publish it
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till 1981 in my first book A New Science of Life Um so it's yes it's over 50
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years since I first thought of the idea So at the time when you came up with the idea was it just like heresy Was it met
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with just tons of uh backlash Well certainly when I first published it
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in in 1981 uh there was a huge backlash I mean there was a very mixed reception
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When I published the my book A New Science of Life some people loved it I
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mean the New Scientist magazine in Britain ran a whole special feature on it They said this was fascinating A lot
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of scientists said it was a immensely stimulating hypothesis and so so forth
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But after 3 months or so there was a big backlash from the journal nature The
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editor of nature sir John Maddox was a militant uh materialist particularly a
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militant atheist and he found this idea very offensive um and he wrote a famous
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editorial called a book for burning and uh created an enormous backlash um
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against it which still echoes on because the among in the so-called skeptical
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community people who um not real skeptics but they're defenders of the materialist worldview they're kind of
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ideological skeptics um they have organizations like the committee for
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skeptical inquiry and they have a group the gorilla skeptics on Wikipedia and
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other independent skeptics um who've captured whole sections of Wikipedia
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anything to do with telepathy psychokinesis precognition psychic
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phenomena um and the biographies of people like me I mean they've controlled
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my biography page for at least 15 years Um and so they try to portray me as a
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pseudocientist and morphic resonance as pseudo science and so on So this
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backlash continues to this day and if you look at the references that they site then they're still citing Sir John
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Maddox's denunciation of my work in 1981 uh the in his book for burning editorial
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So this was not just something that happened as a historical blip It's
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something which is still kept current by this organized skeptical movement um and
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particularly in Wikipedia which is where they have the most influence at the moment They're not very influential uh
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in the way they used to be in most other areas but they still they they they hang
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on uh they controlling from behind the scenes large chunks of Wikipedia
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Yeah it's crazy I was just before this conversation I I don't know why I just decided to look up your name on Google
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and I clicked Wikipedia first and it was atrocious what they were you know if you
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just didn't know anything about you and you only read the Wikipedia you would think that you were like this mad
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scientist that was um trying to destroy things But you know if I talk to normal
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everyday people I say "Oh I'm having Rupert Sheldrake on today." They say "Oh great I I love his work It's so
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inspiring It's a very different picture It's a very different picture and it's
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one that they very deliberately construct to put me in the worst possible light Um and the effect it has
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really is is you know that if journalists uh hear anything about my work the first
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thing it is look up Wikipedia then it says I'm controversial I'm a pseudocientist and stuff So they back
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off So that's why there's very little about my work in mainstream media because it's too dangerous for
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journalists to tackle it And so the the gorilla skeptics are um extremely
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effective They work behind the scenes and they break all the rules of Wikipedia You're not supposed to have
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secret cabals people working together editing together but they boast of the
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fact they have secret cabals and they work together and they train up um people to work with them Um and they're
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not the only committed skeptics editing Wikipedia as a number of other people
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But what drives them really is not a belief in science through curiosity
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about science but by a conviction that mechanistic materialism is the only true
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worldview And what makes people so committed to that and get so angry when
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anyone goes against it is usually because they've made this part of a kind
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of atheist worldview a persona for themselves Um their whole identity
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depends on rejecting spirituality and religion Um saying those are just for
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feeble-minded stupid people and they're really smart They've risen above it seen through it etc their whole persona and
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self-identity depends on this world view which is based on the mechanistic
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materialist scientific uh approach Um so that's why they feel it's so important
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to defend this and why they see me as such a threat Um because first of all
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I'm trying to provide alternative scientific approaches to materialism and
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have been doing for decades Secondly you know I take seriously spiritual
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experiences and the spiritual realm Um so this is simply
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something they can't tolerate Um they have to brand all this as pseudocience
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and me as a pseudocientist to try and disqualify me from being taken seriously
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And they've been very effective I mean I can go on with what I do Um and in some
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ways I see this as a blessing because um you know I get about 10 emails a week
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inviting me to give talks or interviews or podcasts or go to conferences and
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this and if Wikipedia said I was you know brilliant and the morphic resonance
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was a fantastic theory that would change the world and stuff instead of 10 I'd get a hundred I'd be overwhelmed So
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actually it's a kind of protective cordon um uh which um means I can lead a
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quieter and more productive life than I might otherwise do Well the good news is I think this
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cabal behind Wikipedia is losing power because more and more people are waking up to um they're looking deeper into
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things and not just uh taking things at face value They're questioning things And so I'm encouraged that I believe
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these old structures that are very materialistic are starting to crack and crumble a bit
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Well I think they are and I think the work you do with After School is part of that process However they they've
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retained the firmst grip they possibly can on Wikipedia itself And one of the
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founders of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales is a hardcore dogmatic materialist and
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supports them Um so if they didn't have support from high up in that organization they wouldn't be so
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powerful But they they do have support from from uh from um Jimmy Wales who is
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um dead against every form of alternative medicine and what he calls woowoo Um so they're able to get away
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with this Yeah Well so I guess what I was