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Some of those experiments look more like ESP than anything else.

Sheldrake considers ESP to be one aspect of the extended mind, which exists due to the workings of morphic fields. This article clarifies a little better than the previous link I gave.

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I don't deny that such things take place, but the establishment does. They've forgotten that "science" just means looking for knowledge. Ruling things out, or off-limits is generally unscientific.

This is very true, and it's something all of us should keep in mind.

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I myself complained to my roommate that the only thing wrong with M & Ms was that they don't come in dark chocolate. Never told anyone else, but within 6 months they came out with purple-packaged, dark chocolate M & Ms. As the chocolates are a most important food group, I consider this to be a milestone. Maybe I'm biased a little.

Not the most concrete evidence I've ever seen for precognition. But it's not hard to find convincing examples of it.

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It's a shame we don't always have all the facts. The rat maze thing could be a result of scent: more rats following the same path; or they could have accounted for scent, and taken countermeasures.

There's a fair bit of info out there of you Google it. The tank was filled with water so I don't think scent was likely to be a factor. When scientists don't like an experimental result, they usually pick apart the methodology and find something to criticise there. The randomization wasn't good enough. The statistical methods were flawed. It hasn't been replicated by other scientists enough times, or those scientists weren't objective enough. The list goes on and on, as it usually does for parapsychology experiments. Scientists were apparently doing that for the rat experiments, but were they right? I don't know. What I do know is that Shedrake is an intelligent scientist whose own methodologies are exhaustively rigorous, and he is unlikely to be citing experiments like the rat one if they had obvious flaws -- though I'd be laughed out of town if I said that to the scientists who think he's a crank.

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I'm curious about which things are open to question, in your opinion. You still seem dogmatic about "evolution did happen", and "natural selection has been observed".

Everything is open to question, and it should be. We should never be 100% arrogant that we are right about something and fully understand it.

I say that evolution happened because the evidence for it is so strong. I can't see a better explanation for the sorting of the fossil record. I say that natural selection has been observed because it has been. Scientists can test these things in a lab with yeasts and bacteria and other little critters that reproduce very quickly, and whose environments can easily be controlled artificially. But you don't even need a lab to see it in action. How else do you think antibiotic resistance has developed?

I'm not dogmatic about those things, it's not as if I have some need to believe in them. But they make a lot of sense and they fit with the evidence.

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I'm also concerned that this discussion (already somewhat off-topic) is going to become directionless.

That's never stopped anyone here before. Besides, look at the title of this thread. What is "on topic" for that, since it's a joke in itself to begin with?