How much is that doggy in the window?
A brief evaluation of the Jaytee experiments

In the early 1990s, Mathew Smith, Julie Milton, and I investigated ‘Jaytee’, a dog who could allegedly psychically predict when his owner was returning home.

We believed that the results of our study did not support the dog’s alleged ability, and published our results in the British Journal of Psychology. You can read this paper here.

At roughly the same time, Rupert Sheldrake (RS) conducted additional work with Jaytee. RS criticised the study conducted by Mathew Smith, Julie Milton and myself. You can read his paper here. We subsequently replied to the points raised in this critique (paper here), and RS replied to our reply (paper here).

In addition, RS conducted his own studies with Jaytee and argued that his findings suggested that Jaytee was able to signal when his owner started to return home from a distant location (see, e.g., this paper).

I am sometimes asked about RS’s experiments with Jaytee. I have outlined my thoughts and concerns in this unpublished paper.