The Smear Tactics of COVID-19 Origins Dogmatists Resembled Those of Human Origins Dogmatists

"What we have seen with the lab-leak controversy is experts responding to this state of affairs not with the kind of humility the situation calls for, but by forcing consensus to create the appearance of certitude in order to preserve their social and political authority. The misrepresentation of the state of our knowledge regarding Covid’s origins was therefore not simply a misstep or institutional failure. It was a perversion of the norms that scientific institutions and experts are supposed to uphold."  -- M. Anthony Mills, article in The New Atlantis

The COVID-19 pandemic began spreading worldwide early in the year 2020, after originating in Wuhan, China, the site of two major virus labs. In February 2020 a letter appeared in the British medical journal The Lancet entitled "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19." The statement denounced as "misinformation" and "conspiracy theories" suspicions that "COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."  It stated the following:

"The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."

The authors suggested that "conjecture" on this topic should be repressed for the sake of "unity," stating, "We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture." 

What was going on here was what we may call a slander-steamroller. The elements were as follows:

(1) Those supportive of a reasonable hypothesis (the hypothesis of an accidental lab leak) were slandered as supporters of "conspiracy theories." In recent years accusing someone of being a conspiracy theorist is a way of dismissing that person as being some wildly unrealistic fantasist whose thoughts should be ignored.  In this case the accusation was slanderous, because the hypothesis of a lab leak has no dependence on any conspiracy theory. A person can reasonably suspect that COVID-19 arose from some accidental lab leak that was the result of unintentional human error, not some conspiracy to create a new virus and send it out into the world. 

(2) The prestige of the Lancet was used as a kind of springboard to create a steamroller effect, in which discussion of the lab-leak hypothesis became unofficially taboo. 

The Daily Mail quotes a scholar of COVID-19 origins (Jamie Metzl) as speaking very unfavorably about the February 2020 Lancet letter orchestrated by Daszak:

"Jamie Metzl, who sits on the World Health Organization's advisory committee on human genome editing and is a former Bill Clinton administration staffer, said Dr Daszak's letter was a 'form of thuggery'. He said: ‘The Lancet letter was scientific propaganda and a form of thuggery and intimidation. By labelling anyone with different views a conspiracy theorist, the Lancet letter was the worst form of bullying in full contravention of the scientific method.' "

Metzl was using a little hyperbole, as no literal thuggery (no literal physical violence) was involved, and mere words are never "the worst form of bullying," which is physical violence. It is rather hard to judge exactly how much of an effect the February 2020 Lancet letter had. But it did rather seem in early 2020 that the letter had "worked like a charm" to tell scientists that no heresy was allowed from the prevailing view on this topic.  Throughout that year scientists acted as if they were thinking, "We got the memo: it is a taboo to question the purely natural origin of COVID-19." 

But in the year 2021, things started to change. Article after article in the mainstream press began to treat respectfully the lab leak hypothesis as an alternate theory of COVID-19 origins. An example is the article here in the widely-read science review site Inference. In the press around the middle of 2021 we heard quite a few scientists say that in retrospect it was a mistake to brand those in favor of the lab leak hypothesis as "conspiracy theorists." The lab leak hypothesis is  mainly a theory of human error and human overconfidence, not a theory of some sinister conspiracy.  Quite a few scientists said something along the lines that going forward, there should be a calm scientific debate about the alternate ideas of a purely natural origin of COVID-19 and a laboratory-related origin, without people mudslinging those who took either of the positions. 

In 2022 a scientific paper was published, entitled, "A call for an independent inquiry into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus." Referring to a furin-cleavage site (FCS) that is a key part of the SARS-CoV-2  virus that causes COVID-19, the paper said, "We do not know whether the insertion of the FCS was the result of natural evolution —perhaps via a recombination event in an intermediate mammal or a human —or was the result of a deliberate introduction of the FCS into a SARS-like virus as part of a laboratory experiment."

Two developments have shown that there never was any good basis for unanimity about COVID-19 origins.  They are these:

(1) An official US government report (which you can read here)  stated the following, using "IC elements" to mean government agencies such as the FBI and the CIA involved with intelligence analysis:

"Four IC elements and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. These analysts give weight to China’s officials’ lack of foreknowledge, the numerous vectors for natural exposure, and other factors.  One IC element assesses with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

So the result was: no conclusion on COVID-19 origins were made  with high confidence, and the only conclusion made with medium confidence was a conclusion in favor of the lab leak hypothesis.

(2) About two weeks ago the WHO issued a report on COVID-19 origins that was very inconclusive, and stated that more research needed to be done on the lab-leak hypothesis. An Associated Press story summarizes the report with this headline: "WHO: COVID origins unclear but lab leak theory needs study."

We read the following in the AP story:

"Over two years after the coronavirus was first detected in China, and after at least 6.3 million deaths have been counted worldwide from the pandemic, the World Health Organization is recommending in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is required into whether a lab accident may be to blame.

That stance marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins, and comes after many critics accused WHO of being too quick to dismiss or underplay a lab-leak theory that put Chinese officials on the defensive.

WHO concluded last year that it was 'extremely unlikely' COVID-19 might have spilled into humans in the city of Wuhan from a lab. Many scientists suspect the coronavirus jumped into people from bats, possibly via another animal.

Yet in a report released Thursday, WHO’s expert group said 'key pieces of data' to explain how the pandemic began were still missing. The scientists said the group would 'remain open to any and all scientific evidence that becomes available in the future to allow for comprehensive testing of all reasonable hypotheses.' ”

The slander-steamroller effect that occurred in the year 2020 regarding a far-from-settled matter of biological origins resembled another slander-steamroller effect that has long occurred regarding a different far-from-settled matter of biological origins: the matter of human origins. The second of these slander-steamroller effects has worked like this:

(1) Critics reasonably disputing the credibility of Darwinist accounts of human origins have long been unfairly slandered as "creationists," a term suggesting scriptural motivations, even when the arguments of such critics make no appeal to scripture, but are based only on the mountainous complexity of human bodies and human mental phenomena, and the inadequacy of Darwinist explanations for such wonders. 

(2) The social conformity engine that is modern academia has acted as a steamroller to suppress contrarian explanations and create groupthink, creating an "everyone must sing from the same choir book" environment in which reasonable critics advancing credible alternative explanations are labeled as heretics and painted as kooks, in an ad hominem sort of way. 

We do not yet understand COVID-19 origins, and we should not pretend that we do.  Those who advance the reasonable hypothesis of a lab-leak should not be slander-steamrolled through ad hominem smears such as calling them "conspiracy theorists." Similarly, we do not understand human origins, and we should not pretend that we do. Those who advance the reasonable hypothesis of teleology and design as a chief causal factor in human origins should not be slandered and smeared as thinkers who have scriptural motivations, when the main motivations of such thinkers are the mountainous levels of physical organization and information-rich complexity in human bodies and a host of hard-to-explain wonders of the human mind and spirit, all observed and studied long after any scriptures were written. 

The origin of about 20,000 types of fine-tuned human protein molecules, the origin of about 200 types of enormously complex human cells,  the origin of the mountainous levels of hierarchical organization in human bodies (not explained by DNA that does not specify such organization), and the origin of many human mind capabilities (not credibly explained by anything in brains)  are all unsolved problems thousands or millions of times harder to naturally explain than the "furin-cleavage site (FCS)" origin problem that so vexes scientists trying to explain the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.  So what sense does it make to be advocating intellectual humility and reservation of judgment about COVID-19 origins, while acting in an opposite way about human origins? 

There is an accurate term that can be used to describe those who believe or suspect that design or purpose were key factors in the origin of humans. The word is "teleologist." "Teleology" is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as  "the use of design or purpose as an explanation of natural phenomena." 

There is no truth to claims or insinuations that proper scientists only find purely natural explanations for phenomena. There is no such rule in the world of science. Scientists such as archeologists ponder old things such as bones and stones and huge rocks, and are quite ready to choose either purely natural explanations involving no purpose or intention or explanations involving design and purpose and willful activity. For example, an archeologist may decide that some old chipped stone or some circle of large rocks arose after some purposeful intervention by a willful agent.  Similarly, astronomers analyzing radio waves from outer space are quite ready to announce the discovery of design and purpose as soon as they find some radio waves that sufficiently resemble waves that were transmitted by purposeful agents. And chemists analyzing some soil or meteorologists analyzing the atmosphere sure don't follow some rule of "always believe the causes were mindless and not designed." 

According to the AP article quoted above, "The World Health Organization is recommending in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is required into whether a lab accident may be to blame" for the origin of COVID-19. But when will our mainstream scientists start declaring that a deeper probe is required into whether Darwinist explanations can credibly account for human origins? They will probably long avoid such a declaration, because such a declaration would involve a gigantic scholarly commitment that they would prefer not to make.  That type of deeper probe should include a deep inquiry into what exactly are the capabilities of human minds, and what exactly are the human experiences and abilities that are hardest to explain (or impossible to explain) with conventional explanations or neural and genetic explanations. That type of inquiry would require scientists to start reading hundreds of important volumes that they have failed to read, and should have read before ever claiming to understand human origins. A small fraction of those volumes are listed in my post here.  

The topic of human mental phenomena is a topic of oceanic depth. Rather than plunge into that ocean and deeply explore it, the typical biologist has got away with a merely superficial study of the human mind, like someone who studies the ocean only by riding around atop the sea in a boat or wading at the shore. Will our biologists ever pledge to make a full study of the human mind and all its strange facets and hard-to-explain phenomena, like some student of the ocean pledging to do many hours of scuba diving?  Don't hold your breath waiting for such a pledge.  It's much easier to cling to unfounded explanatory boasts, and to claim that you understand the origin of minds that you have not studied a hundredth as deeply as you should before boasting that you understand how such minds arose. 

Just before publishing this post this morning, I saw a long article in the Guardian entitled "Do we need a new theory of evolution?" The "teaser" text below the title seems to mention another case of smear tactics being used by human origins dogmatists. It says this:

"A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as misguided careerists – and the conflict may determine the future of biology."

What we have in the article is kind of a portrait of an evolution "industry" (to use a term used by the article) in disarray and disagreement.  Below is one quote:

"This is the basic story of evolution, as recounted in countless textbooks and pop-science bestsellers. The problem, according to a growing number of scientists, is that it is absurdly crude and misleading." 

We are told that when some contrarian scientists organized a New Trends in Evolution conference, they were fiercely attacked by fellow scientists: "the personal attacks and insinuations against the scientists involved were 'shocking' and 'ugly', said one scientist." Why of course -- that's the same kind of smear tactics I mention in this post.  We hear quite a bit in the article about problems with the so-called "modern synthesis" of evolutionary biology, but no mention of its central defect: its phony-baloney idea or insinuation that DNA (consisting of genes) is a blueprint for an organism, an idea that is just plain false. As discussed here, DNA has no specification of the structure of an organism, and does not even specify how to make any of the cells of an organism. The Guardian article has a link to a scientific paper saying this about the "modern synthesis" of evolutionary biology: "proposing it as a master theory was premature, and claiming that it was established empirically was an exaggeration bordering on delusion." 

Postscript: A recent biology paper preprint is entitled "Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2."  The paper states this: 

"Both the restriction site fingerprint and the pattern of mutations generating them are extremely unlikely in wild coronaviruses and nearly universal in synthetic viruses. Our findings strongly suggest a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV2."

Study Suggests That Very Many Scientists Are Lying About Sharing Data

It used to be that scientific data was gathered in notebooks, making it relatively inconvenient for scientists to share data. If you were a scientist with 20 notebooks containing experimental observations, you might be reluctant to loan such notebooks to someone wishing to examine your data. You could make photocopies of all of your notebooks, but that might be quite the little chore.  But excuses for sharing data pretty much dissolved once the great majority of scientists started recording data using electronic records, using software such as spreadsheets and database programs. For example, if you have a spreadsheet listing 1000 observations, then it is a very simple thing to make a copy of that file, and email that copy to someone who asks to see your data. 

It is also extremely easy nowadays for any scientist to publicly share all of their original source data.  We are far indeed from the early days of the Internet, when you needed to hire some pricey web programming ace to present your data online. Nowadays there are a variety of free online facilities that make it a breeze to publish any kind of data, even if you know nothing about programming. An example is the Blogger software used to make this blog. That system makes it very easy to publish dated posts that can be rich in tables and photos. After logging into www.blogger.com, anyone with a Google account can create any number of blogs, each of which can have any number of posts, each of which can have any number of tables and photos. Each post has its own unique URL, which helps to facilitate data sharing. 

Consequently, there have been more and more demands for scientists to be sharing all of the data that underlies their papers. Many have said that there is no reason why most scientists should not be publishing all of their data online whenever they publish a paper, rather than merely writing up some paper summarizing such data. Many scientists have responded by publishing all of their data online when one of their studies has been published. But far more often scientists will merely offer a promise to make such data available when someone requests it. Given the ease of publishing data these days online, we should be extremely suspicious about such promises. Since it is such a breeze these days to publish data online, why would someone not publish his source data online if he was willing to share it?

The leading science journal Nature has recently published an article giving the results of an effort to determine how many of these promises to make data available upon request are as worthless as a politician's promise to always tell the truth. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the great majority of scientists who claim to make their data available upon request do not actually honor such requests when they are made. In the article we read this:

"Livia Puljak, who studies evidence-based medicine at the Catholic University of Croatia in Zagreb, and her colleagues analysed 3,556 biomedical and health science articles published in a month by 282 BMC journals....The team identified 381 articles with links to data stored in online repositories and another 1,792 papers for which the authors indicated in statements that their data sets would be available on reasonable request. The remaining studies stated that their data were in the published manuscript and its supplements, or generated no data, so sharing did not apply. But of the 1,792 manuscripts for which the authors stated they were willing to share their data, more than 90% of corresponding authors either declined or did not respond to requests for raw data (see ‘Data-sharing behaviour’). Only 14%, or 254, of the contacted authors responded to e-mail requests for data, and a mere 6.7%, or 120 authors, actually handed over the data in a usable format. The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology on 29 May."

The article mentions some mostly ridiculous "dog ate my homework" kind of excuses for reluctance to share data:

"Researchers who declined to supply data in Puljak’s study gave varied reasons. Some had not received informed consent or ethics approval to share data; others had moved on from the project, had misplaced data or cited language hurdles when it came to translating qualitative data from interviews."  

These are all pretty ridiculous excuses.  Specifically:

(1) "Misplaced data" is an excuse that is an admission of professional incompetence. Any researcher carrying on his affairs competently will be able to easily back up his data in multiple places, so that there will be no possibility of losing data by misplacement. 

(2) "Language hurdles" is not a viable excuse in these days of Google Translate.  Source data can be supplied in a non-English language, and the person wishing to translate the data can go to the trouble of using Google Translate to translate the data into the preferred language. 

(3) Because sharing data gathered in electronic form is a "breeze" not requiring much effort, an excuse of having "moved on from the project" is not a substantial one. Experimental source data should be published online as part of the job of doing an experiment, meaning there will be no need to ask for work from scientists who have "moved on from the project" after the project has finished.  

(4) "Informed consent" is not a substantial excuse, because there are so many simple ways of hiding patient names or subject names when presenting source data. Below is one example. A column containing patient names is simply formatted so that the patient names are illegible:

A well-designed experiment can also easily get around the issue of exposing patient names by elementary methods such as collecting data by using patient numbers or subject birth dates rather than names that can change through marriage.  

We should suspect that the main reason why so many scientists are reluctant to share their source data is because sharing such data would allow independent analysts to discover that the scientists engaged in Questionable Research Practices or drew unwarranted conclusions from their data. Many scientists write scientific papers that have titles, summaries or causal inferences that are not justified by the data in the papers. A scientific study found that "Thirty-four percent of academic studies and 48% of media articles used language that reviewers considered too strong for their strength of causal inference." A study of inaccuracy in the titles of scientific papers states, "23.4 % of the titles contain inaccuracies of some kind." A scientific study found that 48% of scientific papers use "spin" in their abstracts. An article in Science states that "more than half of Dutch scientists regularly engage in questionable research practices, such as hiding flaws in their research design or selectively citing literature," and that "one in 12 [8 percent] admitted to committing a more serious form of research misconduct within the past 3 years: the fabrication or falsification of research results." In a survey of animal cognition researchers, large fractions of researchers confessed to a variety of procedural sins.  I know from my long study of neuroscience research that the use of Questionable Research Practices in cognitive neuroscience is a runaway epidemic, and I estimate that a very large fraction or a majority of research papers in cognitive neuroscience are guilty of one or more types of Questionable Research Practices.

We should not let research scientists get away with "the dog ate my homework" kind of excuses listed above for their failure to publish their original source data.  Nowadays the electronic publication of data is so easy that there is no excuse why experimental scientists should not be publishing all of their original source data. A good general rule to follow is to simply disregard or question the reliability of any experimental study that fails to publish all of its original source data.  Just as any properly designed building will have room exits and smoke detectors, any properly designed experimental study will be one that makes it possible for the researchers to conveniently publish all of their original source data without much additional hassle. If a study was incompetently designed so that its original source data cannot be publicly published, we should suspect that there were design defects in the study, and that it is not reliable.  Similarly, if a building is incompetently designed so that people will not be warned of a fire promptly and cannot speedily escape a fire, we should suspect that the building has other design defects that make it unsafe for habitation. 

The Puljak study suggests that a very large fraction of scientists are lying when they claim that their original data is available upon request. Sadly this seems to be  another reason why we should  be suspicious about the speech of scientists, and suspect that large fractions of them are making questionable or dubious claims. The low-replication problem in scientific research was highlighted in a widely cited 2005 paper by John Ioannidis entitled, “Why Most Published Research Studies Are False.” A scientist named C. Glenn Begley and his colleagues tried to reproduce 53 published studies called “ground-breaking.” He asked the scientists who wrote the papers to help, by providing the exact materials to publish the results. Begley and his colleagues were only able to reproduce 6 of the 53 experiments. In 2011 Bayer reported similar results. They tried to reproduce 67 medical studies, and were only able to reproduce them 25 percent of the time. 

A paper attempting to reproduce 193 cancer studies revealed massive rot and dysfunction in the world of experimental science. The paper stated, "None of the 193 experiments were described in sufficient detail in the original paper to enable us to design protocols to repeat the experiments, so we had to seek clarifications from the original authors." Upon asking for additional information from the scientists who ran the experiments,  the authors found that while 41% of the scientists were very helpful in providing information, 9% of the scientists were only minimally helpful, and 32% of the scientists were not helpful at all or did not respond to requests for information.  Such a result suggests that a significant fraction of all cancer experiments (20% or more) are either junk science procedures that scientists are ashamed to discuss, or fraudulent experiments that scientists refuse to talk about any further, because of a fear of their fraud being discovered.  

As long as there is a reproducibility crisis, in which very large fractions (or perhaps even a majority) of scientific research cannot be successfully reproduced, we should not at all take for granted something as a truth merely because some scientist asserts it. 

Postscript: What goes on very often in these papers is when authors  claim that the source data is available upon request, but fail to provide any information allowing someone to contact the author.  An example is the paper here. The paper includes no email addresses allowing anyone to conveniently send a request to any of its authors. There is an email icon next to one of the authors, but clicking on that icon does not reveal any email address.  I am able to find various profiles for the author, listing her papers. But none of the profiles includes an email address. 

When Objects Seem to Mysteriously Appear

In the literature of the paranormal, the term "apports" refer to objects that seem to mysteriously appear at a particular location. On page 63 of his book A Theory of the Mechanism of Survival: The Fourth Dimension and Its Applications, Whatley Carrington introduces the topic:

"If we have a closed room, of which all the windows, doors, and other apertures have been carefully shut and sealed, it is clearly impossible to introduce any solid object into that room, by normal means, without breaking the seals and opening one of the apertures. The same would apply to a closed, locked and sealed box. But the literature of Psychical research abounds with instances where objects are alleged to have been introduced into such closed and sealed rooms and boxes or removed from them, which comes to the same thing without breaking the seals. This is the phenomenon of 'apport' properly so called and it forms a special case of the more general class of 'apparent penetration of matter by matter.' "

An apparent observation of an apport was recorded by Alfred Russel Wallace, one of the two fathers of the theory of evolution.  Wallace records the following event occurring in his own home, referring to a Miss Nichols as Miss N:

"The first time this occurred was at my own house, at a very early stage of her development. All present were my own friends. Miss N. had come early to tea, it being mid-winter, and she had been with us in a very warm gas-lighted room four hours before the flowers appeared. The essential fact is, that upon a bare table in a small room closed and dark (the adjoining room and passage being well lighted), a quantity of flowers appeared, which were not there when we put out the gas a few minutes before. They consisted of anemones, tulips, chrysanthemums, Chinese primroses, and several ferns. All were absolutely fresh, as if just gathered from a conservatory. They were covered with a fine cold dew. Not a petal was crumpled or broken, not the most delicate point or pinnule of the ferns was out of place. I dried and preserved the whole, and have attached to them the attestation of all present that they had no share, as far as they knew, in bringing the flowers into the room. I believed at the time, and still believe that it was absolutely impossible for Miss N. to have concealed them so long, to have kept them so perfect, and, above all, to produce them covered throughout with a most beautiful coating of dew, just like that which collects on the outside of a tumbler when filled with very cold water on a hot day."

Samuel Guppy gave this testimony of seeing something similar:

"First, the room was searched by the gentlemen while Mrs. Guppy was being undressed and re-dressed in the presence of Mrs. Trollope, every article of her dress being closely examined. We sat at the table, Mrs. Guppy firmly held, both hands, by Mr. Trollope and his wife, while Colonel Harvey and Miss Blayden held my hands and touched Mrs. Guppy's. In about ten minutes all exclaimed, ' I smell flowers,' and a shower of flowers came. On lighting the candle the whole of Mrs. Guppy's and Mr. Trollope's hands and arms were found covered with jonquil flowers. The smell was quite overpowering. The doors had been locked, the window fastened. Had a bunch of jonquils been in the room before the stance it would have been detected by the smell."

In a very interesting book he wrote, Charles Tweedale records seeing an apparent apport, a jar of ointment that seemed to appear out of thin air:

"Sunday,  13th  November  1910. — Mother  had  sustained  a cut  on  the  head,  and  she,  my  wife  and  I were  all  in  the dining-room  at  9.20  p.m.  We  were  all  close  together, mother  seated  in  a chair,  self  and  wife  standing.  No  one else  was  in  the  room.  My  wife  was  in  the  act  of  parting mother’s  hair  with  her  fingers  to  examine  the  cut,  and  I was looking  on.  At  that  instant  I happened  to  raise  my  eyes and  I saw  something  issue  from  a point  close  to  the  ceiling in  the  comer  of  the  room  over  the  window  and  distant  from my  wife  (who  had  her  back  to  it)  three  and  a quarter yards,  and  four  and  a quarter  yards  from  myself,  facing  it. It  shot  across  the  room  close  to  the  ceiling,  and  struck  the wall  over  the  piano,  upon  which  it  then  fell,  making  the strings  vibrate,  and  so  on  to  the  floor  on  which  it  rolled.  I ran  and  picked  it  up,  and  found,  to  my  astonishment,  that it  was  a jar  of  ointment  which  mother  used  especially  for cuts  and  bruises  and  which  she  kept  locked  up  in  her  wardrobe. The  intention  was  evident,  the  ointment  was  for  the wound."

On another page of the book, Tweedale makes this remarkable claim:

"The  apparent  passage  of  objects  through  the  walls  and ceilings  has  many  times  been  observed  by  myself  and  the various  members  of  my  household.  On  two  occasions  an article  composed  of  glass  and  metal  was  observed  to  float lightly  down  from  the  ceiling  just  like  a leaf  on  a summer’s breeze." 

On another page of the book Tweedale makes a similar claim:

"On  another  occasion  (17th  January  1911)  a shower  of articles  came  apparently  through  the  ceiling  and  fell  upon the  tea-table,  in  the  presence  of  six  witnesses,  and  in  a good  light.  On  11th  November  1913  a stick  three  feet ten  inches  long  came  slowly  through  the  solid  plaster ceiling  in  presence  of  my  daughter  Marjorie  and  the  servant, in  full  lamplight,  and  fell  on  the  table,  leaving  no  trace  of its  passage ; and  again,  on  29th  January  1911,  a solid article  came  apparently  through  the  ceiling  in  our  bedroom, in  presence  of  myself  and  wife,  in  broad  daylight,  and slowly  descended  on  to  the  pillow.  All  these  objects proved  to  be  objective  and  real  when  we  came  to  pick them  up.  These  phenomena  have  often  been  observed in  the  presence  of  powerful  psychics,  or  where  psychic influences  have  been  strong.  Robert  Dale  Owen,  the cultured  United  States  Consul  at  Naples,  and  an  ardent materialist  until  turned  from  his  materialism  by  the  force of  these  evidences,  describes  how  on  one  occasion  he  and six  others  saw  a beautiful  female  figure  emerge  from  the wall  of  a long  drawing-room,  glide  to  where  they  were  sitting, drop  into  his  hand  what  proved  to  be  a rose , and  disappear through  the  wall  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  room."

One encyclopedia states this:

"Apport phenomena is still reliably reported. One of the most renowned modern psychics producing apports is Roberto Campagni in Italy. The Genonanese physicist Alfredo Ferraro states that he has seen thirty apports materialized by Campagni and has established beyond doubt that no trickery is involved."

On page 63 of his book A Theory of the Mechanism of Survival: The Fourth Dimension and Its Applications, Whatley Carrington explains why seemingly impossible apport phenomena may be very possible indeed as long as we assume a fourth dimension of space:

"'Rooms' and 'boxes' which would appear to be absolutely closed to a two [dimensional] space being would be perfectly open to us who live in a three [dimensional] space world. Just as every point in the interior of a two-space figure is absolutely open in the direction of the third dimension, so we must suppose from analogy that the interior of a closed three space figure a box or room is perfectly accessible from the direction of the fourth dimension. Consequently on the hypothesis that four-space actually exists as a reality, and is peopled by intelligent beings, possessed of the necessary 'apparatus' whatever that may be the explanation of the phenomenon of apport is quite simple. We have only to suppose that the object in question is moved out of the containing space, in the direction of the fourth dimension, and then put down again into three space outside the box or room in which it originally was. Or conversely, when it is a question of introducing an object into a closed space. During transit, the object would, of course, be located entirely outside of three-space."

Page 216 of a 1907 document states this:

"A favourite performance of the unseen entities was to bring objects into the room from the other apartments, or from outside altogether. One of the pleasantest of these ' apports '— as the French experimenters have appropriately named objects so strangely produced— was a lovely bunch of azaleas which were found lying on the floor covered with dew, having all the appearance of being freshly gathered. Amongst other apports brought at other times were tomatoes, tobacco, hot cinders which didn't bum anybody, and Mr. Thompson’s revolver, with cartridges for the same...The modus operandi is still for the greater part a mystery; but an inkling as to its solution is to be found associated with what is known as ' the fourth dimension.'  The essential principle is the passage of matter through matter, the truth of which has been proved to demonstration, although at a first glance it appears to be an impossibility. It is as if the apports were first reduced to something resembling a gaseous form, and in that attenuated condition passed through the solid walls or doors of the apartment in which the operators are sitting, and then are brought together again in the solid form by their inherent force of gravity, or some external force applied by unseen agency....We may conceive a process by which any article may have the speed of its atomic vibration so increased as to become invisible to mortal eyes. In that attenuated condition it is easy to suppose the limitations of three-dimensional space removed and the object passing without obstruction or difficulty through the material objects of greater density, which, on the lower plane, would block its path. Thus we should have the ' passage of matter through matter ' accounted for ; and this accomplished, the lowering of the rate of vibration would speedily restore the apported article to its normal state and to normal vision."

We think of matter as being solidly packed, but according to modern science only the nucleus of an atom is solidly packed. Almost all of an atom is empty space, and the electrons of an atom orbit far away from the nucleus, just as planets orbit far away from their suns. Given such facts, it does not seem so impossible that there could occur events such as solid objects passing through locked doors or solid walls. 

Let us consider a two-dimensional creature, like those depicted in the classic imaginative work Flatland by Edwin Abbott. To such a creature, it would seem very possible for some creature (represented by the circle) to escape from the box on the left of the visual below, by going out the exit area on the left. But to such a creature, it might seem impossible to escape from the box on the right, there being no such exit area. 

But to a three-dimensional being, this "impossibility" vanishes.  For such a being, the ring in the box on the right can be removed by simply lifting it up in the air, and taking it out of the box. Similarly, to a four-dimensional being, moving solid matter through solid matter (what seems like an impossibility to us) may be as easy as lifting a ring out of a box with an open top.  But just as a two-dimensional being could never imagine how a ring could be removed from a box by lifting the ring up, we three-dimensional beings might never be able to imagine how solid matter could be passed through solid matter, by some route conceivable only to four-dimensional beings. 

I have never watched an object as it materialized out of thin air. But (as described here) I have observed some cases that seemed to be the next best thing to such an observation. Once a pair of keys that I was never able to identify seemed to bounce off my lap and fall down a set of stairs I was sitting at the top of. At another time I was perplexed by what seemed like coins mysteriously appearing in my apartment. I decided to rigorously investigate the matter, by first making sure that every single coin in my apartment was in a container. Immediately after very carefully double-checking that there were no loose coins anywhere in my apartment, I went to pour some lemon juice into a cup of tea. I then saw a coin rolling up from behind me, the coin rolling on its edge. I was alone in the apartment when this happened. On another day (the day of a sister's death) I discovered two scrolls on my floor, with their position being utterly inexplicable. Neither of the only two people in the apartment at the time (me and my wife) had moved the scrolls from where they had been for years, buried deep inside a drawer several meters away, a drawer no one had touched that day.  

I received an email announcing an event called "SSE-PA Breakthrough 2022," sponsored by the Society for Scientific Exploration and the Parapsychological Association on June 23-26, 2022. One of the presentations will be entitled "Coin-Based Apports: Advancements on Multiple Agency Anomalous Events." On the page here we read this description of a case that will be discussed, one in which continuously-running cameras apparently caught some anomalous activity:

"The case at hand develops in Mexico City, surrounding a married couple, including a man (56 years old) and a woman (45 years old) whom we will refer to as HM and LP, respectively, both unaffiliated to mediumship, and with presumably recurrent apports since 2016. The apported objects are usually well-preserved coins from Mexico and other countries, but medals, dead flowers, and even apples have been reported to appear as well....At least 61 apported coins have been documented inside their houses since the onset of the phenomena, and another 38 since the installation of the cameras. Nonetheless, fruits and withered plants have also been reported or recorded, as well as raps, whispers, scents, and orbs."

As astonishing as apport phenomena are, I do not regard them as being the most mystifying things I have ever learned about.  The wonder of morphogenesis that is the physical origin of every human is a marvel more mystifying and astonishing.  Once you very carefully study the relevant facts and realize (contrary to misleading statements commonly made) that there is no blueprint or recipe for making a human in either a DNA molecule or a speck-sized ovum, and also the fact that blueprints cannot construct complex things,  you may begin to realize that the nine-month progression from a speck-sized ovum to the supremely organized and very hierarchically structured state of an internally dynamic human body is a marvel of origination far more impressive than flowers mysteriously appearing on a table during some seance or a coin rolling up from behind you when you are alone in your home.   

Scientists Keep Speaking Unrealistically About Life's Origin

The concept of abiogenesis is the idea that life can naturally arise from non-life. This is a concept that has zero basis in observational science or theoretical science. No one has ever done an experiment supporting the idea that life can naturally arise from non-life. There is no truth in claims such as claims that experiments such as the Miller-Urey experiment did anything to support claims about abiogenesis.  In multiple ways the Miller-Urey experiment failed to realistically simulate early Earth conditions; and the outputs of the Miller-Urey experiment (mere amino acids) were no more a living thing than a handful of nuts and bolts is a working digital computer. As described in my recent post "When Hi-Tech Manufacturing Is Passed Off as Evolution," some of the results that are being passed off these days as being supportive of the concept of abiogenesis are cases in which hi-tech manufacturing results are being passed off as examples of evolution, which is an example of extremely misleading speech.

Our scientists sometimes make wildly unrealistic statements on this topic.  An example can be found on the page here. An astronomer named Steven Vogt speaks about a planet called Gliese 581g, a possibly nonexistent extrasolar planet that may be in the "Goldilocks zone" around its star, neither too far from it nor too close to it. No one has even discovered either liquid water on this planet or oxygen in its atmosphere. We are not even sure that the planet exists, because the Wikipedia.org article on the planet states the following:

"Gliese 581g...unofficially known as Zarmina (or Zarmina's World), is an unconfirmed (and frequently disputed) exoplanet claimed to orbit within the Gliese 581 system, twenty light-years from Earth. It was discovered by the Lick–Carnegie Exoplanet Survey, and is the sixth planet orbiting the star; however, its existence could not be confirmed by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) / High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) survey team, and its existence remains controversial. It is thought to be near the middle of the habitable zone of its star. That means it could sustain liquid water—a necessity for all known life—on its surface, if there are favorable atmospheric conditions on the planet." 

Even though the very existence of this planet is uncertain (as indicated by the statements above), Steven Vogt is quoted as saying that he is 100% sure that the planet contains life.  Below (from an article on www.space.com) is a quote that reveals a whole lot of wishful thinking going on:

" 'Personally,given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today. 'I have almost no doubt about it.'

His colleague, Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Washington, D.C., wasn't willing to put a number on the odds of life, though he admitted he's optimistic.

'It's both an incremental and monumental discovery,' Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told SPACE.com. Incremental because the method used to find Gliese 581g already has found several planets most of the known planets, both super-Earths, more massive than our own world outside their stars' habitable zone, along with non-Earth-like planets within the habitable zone.

'It really is monumental if you accept this as the first Earth-like planet ever found in the star's habitable zone,' said Seager, who was not directly involved in the discovery."

Vogt's statement was not one with any sound scientific basis. It is a statement based on his own personal preferences, as he reveals by confessing that he is speaking based on "my own personal feeling." The rationale given for the opinion makes no sense. It is not true that life is ubiquitous; it does not exist everywhere. No life exists on the moon. As best we can determine, there is no life on Venus. A recent article suggests that claims of a phosphine signal of life on Venus was just a false alarm. A poll of planetary scientists revealed that only a quarter of them think that life could exist now on Mars.  The propensity of life to flourish wherever it can is a different thing from the likelihood of life naturally arising, and the two things should not be confused. 

As for Seager's language, it was the type of speech that gives you the wrong idea. A planet on which life has not been discovered is referred to as an "Earth-like planet." No planet should ever be called Earth-like until the existence of life has been confirmed on that planet. 

There is the strongest reason why it is utterly unrealistic to estimate a 100% probability of life accidentally originating on some planet on which life has never been detected. The reason is that even the simplest microbial life involves a state of organization so vast that we should never expect it to be arising accidentally, even given trillions of planets of just the right type existing at just the right distance from a sun-like star. 

Natural selection does not fix the impossible odds prohibiting the natural origin of hundreds of genes and protein types needed at the very beginning, at the origin of life, before Darwinian evolution has started. A team of 9 scientists wrote a scientific paper entitled, “Essential genes of a minimal bacterium.” It analyzed a type of bacteria (Mycoplasma genitalium) that has “the smallest genome of any organism that can be grown in pure culture.” According to wikipedia's article, this bacteria has 525 genes consisting of 580,070 base pairs. The paper concluded that 382 of this bacteria's protein-coding genes (72 percent) are essential. Life can't get started until there arises in one tiny spot a vast amount of functional information, about as much functional information as in a 300-page technical manual.  We would never expect so much information to arise accidentally, even giving trillions of years and trillions of planets on which accidental chemical combinations can occur. 

Experiments have provided no support for claims such as Vogt's. In experiments realistically simulating early Earth conditions, there has never even arisen a single functional protein molecule. But many types of such very complex molecules would need to arise simultaneously for life to arise from non-life. Experiments realistically simulating early Earth conditions will produce neither the building blocks of one-celled life (protein molecules) nor the building blocks of the building blocks of one-celled life (amino acids and nucleotide base pairs). 

So why do people such as Vogt make claims such as he made? Probably what is going on is mainly ideology and psychology.  Faced with an unpleasant improbability, the human mind is prone to assert a 100% likelihood, rather than admit an improbability such a mind would prefer not to recognize.  Asserting such a 100% likelihood is a great way of kind of mentally squashing some possibility you don't want to recognize.  So, for example, on your wedding day you may tell yourself that there's a 100% likelihood that your spouse will always be faithful to you, rather than realistically conceding some small chance that some day your spouse might be unfaithful. 

Were scientists to realistically calculate the chance of life arising from non-life, they would have to say that such an origination would require some miracle of luck on the same order of someone throwing a deck of cards into the air and having them all form into a house of cards.  But many a scientist prefers not to recognize fortune so improbable in the past. The easiest way to cover-up such miracles of chance is to claim that they are inevitable. But that's as foolish as someone claiming that if you keep throwing decks of cards into the air, one day your toss will luckily form into a house of cards. When scientists such as Vogt say that they are 100% sure that a planet has life when we are not even sure that such a planet exists, that is a very good sign that what is going on is psychology, wishful thinking and ideology rather than realistic mathematical calculation. 

Quanta Magazine has a recent interview with origin-of-life researchers. We have more unrealistic talk and a conspicuous lack of straight talk. Jack Szostak says, "We used to think that life definitely started with just RNA, because we were thinking about ribozymes, RNA catalysts, RNA’s roles in modern cells." Then Szostak paints a portrait of the origin of life that senselessly leaves out the key ingredients of protein molecules. He states this:

"Okay, so, so I think we have to think about some environment on the surface of the Earth, some kind of shallow lake or pond where the building blocks of RNA were made and accumulated, along with lipids and other molecules relevant to biology. And then they self-assembled into lipid vesicles encapsulating RNA, under conditions where the RNA could start to replicate driven by energy from the sun. And that would allow Darwinian evolution to get started. So that the, some RNA sequences that did something useful for the protocell that they’re in would confer an advantage, those protocells would start to take over the population. And then you’re off and running, and life can gradually get more complex and evolve to spread to different environments, until you end up with what we see around us today." 

The idea that life can get started with just RNA and fatty bubbles (only a few of the many types of very complex molecules needed for even the simplest living thing) is utterly unrealistic silly talk, as goofy as saying that you can get a car by having only a steering wheel and an axle. The only reason scientists make these kind of goofy  statements is that they have no realistic explanations for how a living thing with all of its minimal requirements could have arisen from non-life. The long discussion in the interview includes no realistic talk of the difficulty of explaining the origin of very complex protein molecules, which is the principle difficulty of explaining the origin of life from non-life. It's kind of like if someone was discussing the accidental origin of automobiles, and forgot to mention the little difficulty of explaining the accidental origin of an engine. The discussion has some "bubble baby talk" in which someone tries to convince us that the ease of some fatty bubble splitting into two has some relevance to a cell dividing into two (it does not). 

Why is it that the quotation above does not mention protein molecules? Because explaining the origin of protein molecules is too hard for origin-of-life researchers. There is no factual basis to claims that you can get "off and running" with only RNA and some fatty molecules, and no self-reproducing cells packed with protein molecules. Such a thing has never been observed. No one has ever observed mere RNA and some fatty molecules evolve into a living thing. What we have here is more requirements underestimation, the perennial sin of theoretical scientists.  

A scientific paper has this to say about the RNA World theory promoted by Szostak:

"The 'RNA World' hypothesis suffers from a number of insurmountable problems of chemical and informational nature. The biggest of them are: (a) unreliability of the synthesis of starting components; (b) catastrophically increasing instability of the polynucleotide molecules as they elongate; (c) exceedingly low probability of meaningful sequences; (d) lack of the mechanism that would generate membrane-bound vesicles able to divide regularly and permeable to the nitrogenous bases and other RNA components; (e) absence of driving forces for the transition from the 'RNA world' to the much more complex 'DNA-RNA world'. Therefore, the 'RNA World' scenario is highly improbable."

The Quanta Magazine article includes an interview with a researcher named Betül Kaçar, who makes the extremely untrue and utterly preposterous claim that "life’s origins and early evolution created the blueprints for everything complex around us." To the contrary, there existed no blueprint for human anatomy or human cells in the first hundreds of millions of years of biological evolution.  There is still no known blueprint for human anatomy or human cells in any DNA molecule or cell. Contrary to the frequent misleading claims and insinuations of biologists, DNA only specifies low-level chemical information, not high-level anatomical information.  How the enormously complex hierarchical organization of human anatomy arises from the growth of a speck-sized ovum that does not specify such complexity is a wonder of origination utterly beyond the explanation of today's scientists.  

They don't claim flying horses -- just stuff more unbelievable

In related news, there was a recent story of Chinese radio astronomers reporting candidate signals from extraterrrestrial civilizations, but then retracting their claims.  This was very probably a case of picking up signals from earthly sources. The original report stated this (I've used Google Translate to get a translation):

"After launching the search for extraterrestrial civilizations, the 'China Sky Eye' has made important progress. A few days ago, Professor Zhang Tongjie, chief scientist of the China Extraterrestrial Civilization Research Group of the Department of Astronomy and Extraterrestrial Civilization Research Group of Beijing Normal University, revealed that his team used the 'Chinese Sky Eye' to discover several cases of possible technological traces and extraterrestrial civilizations from outside the earth...Zhang Tongjie said that these are several narrow-band electromagnetic signals different from the past, and the team is currently working on further investigation. 'The search for 'China Sky Eye' is a long one, and we have been working hard.'"

Since the history of SETI has been a history of false alarms, it is hard to get too excited about such a report. As a salon.com story makes clear, this is probably just another example of SETI researchers picking up unidentified earthly signals.

Four Stunning ESP Experiences of Samuel Clemens

 In 1891 Samuel Clemens (using his famous pen name of Mark Twain) published an article in Harper's Magazine entitled "Mental Telegraphy: A Manuscript With a History." In the article (which you can read here) Clemens suggested that he would often seem to get a "crossing of letters" effect in which he would write someone, only to get a letter from the same person, too soon to be a reply to his letter. Clemens then discusses what he calls "the oddest thing that ever happened to me." He describes having a detailed idea for a book: 

"Two or three years ago I was lying in bed, idly musing, one morning—it was the 2d of March when suddenly a red-hot new idea came whistling down into my camp, and exploded with such comprehensive effectiveness as to sweep the vicinity clean of rub- bishy reflections, and fill the air with their dust and flying fragments. This idea, stated in simple phrase, was that the time was ripe and the market ready for a certain book; a book which ought to be written at once; a book which must command attention and be of peculiar interest—to wit, a book about the Nevada silver mines. The 'Great Bonanza' was a new wonder then, and everybody was talking about it. It seemed to me that the person best qualified to write this book was Mr. William H. Wright, a journalist of Virginia, Nevada, by whose side I had scribbled many months when I was a reporter there ten or twelve years before. He might be alive still; he might be dead; I could not tell; but I would write him, anyway. I began by merely and modestly suggesting that he make such a book; but my interest grew as I went on, and I ventured to map out what I thought ought to be the plan of the work, he being an old friend, and not given to taking good intentions for ill. I even dealt with details, and suggested the order and sequence which they should follow. I was about to put the manuscript in an envelope, when the thought occurred to me that if this book should be written at my suggestion, and then no publisher happened to want it, I should feel uncomfortable; so I concluded to keep my letter back until I should have secured a publisher."

A short time later, Clemens performed a feat that must have seemed like magic to the relative who witnessed it. He describes the feat as follows:

"On the 9th of March the postman brought three or four letters, and among them a thick one whose superscription was in a hand which seemed dimly familiar to me. I could not 'place' it at first, but presently I succeeded. Then I said to a visiting relative who was present: 'Now I will do a miracle. I will tell you everything this letter contains—date, signature, and all—without breaking the seal. It is from a Mr. Wright, of Virginia, Nevada, and is dated the 2d of March—seven days ago. Mr. Wright proposes to make a book about the silver mines and the Great Bonanza, and asks what I, as a friend, think of the idea, He says his subjects are to be so and so, their order and sequence so and so, and he will close with a history of the chief feature of the book, the Great Bonanza.'  I opened the letter, and showed that I had stated the date and the contents correctly. Mr. Wright’s letter simply contained what my own letter, written on the same date, contained, and mine still lay in its pigeon-hole, where it had been lying during the seven days since it was written."

Clemens states that this was not clairvoyance, because he did not actually see inside the envelope the way many clairvoyants have seemed to do. Clemens might have been guessing, based on his previous experience with "crossed letters" in which he would get a letter from someone he had just written, before the person had even received his letter.  But there seems to have been far more than guesswork involved.  Even if you completely discard the statements that Clemens made to his visiting relative, you have the fact that Mr. Wright and Clemens seems to have had on the same day the same unlikely plan for writing a book -- a specific plan about writing a book dealing with silver mining in Nevada, with both of them thinking to write each other, although they both were distant, and both had not spoken in about eleven years. 

Clemens writes the following:

"Chance  might  have  duplicated  one  or  two  of  the  details,  but she  would  have  broken  down  on  the  rest.  I  could  not  doubt— there  was  no tenable  reason  for  doubting — that  Mr.  Wright's  mind  and  mine  had  been  in close  and  crystal-clear  communication  with  each  other  across  three  thousand miles  ot  mountain  and  desert  on  the  morning  of  the  2nd  of  March.  I  did  not consider  that  both  minds  originated  that  succession  of  ideas,  but  that  one  mind originated  them,  and  simply  telegraphed  them  to  the  other.  I  was  curious  to know  which  brain  was  the  telegrapher  and  which  the  receiver,  so  I  wrote and  asked  for  particulars.  Mr.  Wright's  reply  showed  that  his  mind  had  done the  originating  and  telegraphing  and  mine  the  receiving."

Later Clemens tells us the idea for writing the book about silver mining in Nevada was one that was foreign to him, and rather seems to have poured into his mind on the same day and the same time as Mr. Wright wrote his letter to Clemens. Clemens states this:

"A word more as to Mr. Wright. He had had his book in his mind some time; consequently he, and not I, had originated the idea of it. The subject was entirely foreign to my thoughts; I was wholly absorbed in other things. Yet this friend, whom I had not seen and had hardly thought of for eleven years, was able to shoot his thoughts at me across three thousand miles of country, and fill my head with them, to the exclusion of every other interest, in a single moment. He had begun his letter after finishing his work on the morning paper—a little after three o'clock, he said. When it was three in the morning in Nevada it was about six in Hartford, where I lay awake thinking about nothing in particular; and just about that time his ideas came pouring into my head from across the continent, and I got up and put them on paper, under the impression that they were my own original thoughts....I am forced to believe that one human mind (still inhabiting the flesh) can communicate with another, over any sort of a distance, and without any artificial preparation of ‘'sympathetic conditions' to act asa transmitting agent."

A similar story of "crossed letters" (also strongly suggesting telepathy) is told by another author:

"The London Spectator for Christmas, 1881, contains an interesting story by A. J. Duffield, of thought transference. The gist of this story is that a Mr. Strong went to Lake Superior and became foreman of the Franklin copper mine. He fell sick and would have died but for the care of a lady whose husband was a director of the mining company. She had him carried to her own house, and nursed him with kindest care until he recovered. Seven years after this event, when he had drifted away from the mines, he was sitting by himself one evening when he suddenly saw this kind lady in a room with nothing in it, no fire, no food. She was calm and quiet, with the same face she had when she nursed him in the fever. He thereby was made deeply conscious that she was in distress, and sent her a most liberal amount of money by mail. The day after he received a letter from the lady, saying that her husband was sick, and that they were in great suffering, and asking for aid."

Later in the essay, Clemens tells a story about another wonder of correctly guessing the contents of a sealed letter:

"But here are two or three incidents which come strictly under the head of mind-telegraphing. One Monday morning, about a year ago, the mail came in, and I picked up one of the letters and said to a friend: ‘ Without opening this letter I will tell you what it says. It is from Mrs. ----,and she says she was in New York last Saturday, and was purposing to run up here in the afternoon train and surprise us, but at the last moment changed her mind and returned westward to her home.' I was right; my details were exactly correct. Yet we had had no suspicion that Mrs. ---- was coming to New York, or that she had even a remote intention of visiting us." 

Later Clemens tells an account in which it seemed that someone else next to him had read his mind:

"One day last summer, when our family had been away from home several months, I said to a member of the household:

‘ Now, with all this long holiday, and nothing in the way to interrupt—'

‘I can finish the sentence for you,' said the member of the household.

‘ Do it, then,' said I.

‘“George ought to be able, by practising, to learn to let those matches alone.”

It was correctly done. That was what I was going to say. Yet until that moment George and the matches had not been in my mind for three months, and it is plain that the part of the sentence which I uttered offers not the least cue or suggestion of what I was purposing to follow it with."

Later Clemens describes an equally dramatic experience that also seemed like someone pulling out a thought hidden in his mind. He tells us this:

"One day last summer I was lying under a tree, thinking about nothing in particular, when an absurd idea flashed into my head, and I said to a member of the household, ' Suppose I should live to be ninety-two, and dumb and blind and toothless, and just as I was gasping out what was left of me on my death-bed—' 

‘ Wait, I will finish the sentence,' said the member of the household.

‘Go on,' said I.

‘Somebody should rush in with a document, and say, ‘All the other heirs are dead, and you are the Earl of Durham!'

That is truly what I was going to say. Yet until that moment the subject had not entered my mind or been referred to in my hearing for months before. A few years ago this thing would have astounded me, but the like could not much sur prise me now, though it happened every week; for I think I know now that mind can communicate accurately with mind without che aid of the slow and clumsy vehicle of speech."  

I have had experiences as suggestive of telepathy as the experiences described above. I will quote from my long post "Spookiest Observations: A Deluxe Narrative":

"I was at the Queens Zoo in New York City with my two daughters (teenagers at this time). We were looking at a feline animal called a puma, which we could see distantly, far behind a plastic barrier. Suddenly (oddly enough) I had a recollection of a time about 10 years earlier when  I and my daughters saw a gorilla just behind a plastic barrier, at the zoo at Busch Gardens in Florida. About three seconds later (before I said anything), my younger daughter said, 'Do you remember that gorilla we saw close-up in Busch Gardens?' I was flabbergasted. It was as if there was telepathy going on. The incident seems all the more amazing when you consider that teenagers live very much in the present or the near future, and virtually never talk about unimportant things that happened 10 years ago. There was nothing in our field of view that might have caused both of us to have that recollection at the same time. On that zoo visit we hadn't seen a gorilla, nor had we seen any animal near a plastic barrier."

Similarly, once when my daughter was leaving, I had the thought of saying to her, "See you later, alligator" (an expression I have almost never used in my lifetime). But I decided not to say such a thing, thinking she might be offended by being called an alligator. So I merely said, "See you later." My daughter then said, "See you later, alligator" -- an expression I had never heard her use before.  A mysterious mental conjunction very much more impressive (lasting many minutes and involving me and my sister) is discussed in my "Spookiest Observations" post you can read here. 

Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain

Senselessly, our academia authorities typically encourage us to ignore such events when they occur. We should instead always be carefully recording such anomalies whenever they occur, because such anomalies are very important clues as to the fundamental nature of who we are (something very different from what we are told we are by typical academia authorities who know much less than they think, largely because of the narrowness of their studies).