TED Deletes Talks by Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock

[JackRiddler]

In Gulliver's Travels he predicted the existence and orbital periods of the moons of Mars. A hundred years later, when astronomers first observed these moons using the latest telescopes, they named them Phobos and Demos [sic!] - fear and terror - so awestruck were they by Swift's evident supernatural powers.

Bullshit on every count. In Greek mythology, Phobos and Deimos are the horses of Ares a.k.a. Mars, and that is the reason for the names of the two moons. Swift's novel included a bit about the fictional Laputans discovering two moons of Mars, which is not very amazing as far as coincidences go. The orbital periods given in Gulliver's Travels are unrelated to the actual ones of Phobos and Deimos. Demos is not a moon of Mars. It means the people or the public.

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/inde ... s-of-mars/

I wonder how well the rest of these claims would hold up.

[seemslikeadream]

watch this

TED: Some ideas TOO fascinating - Hancock, Sheldrake’s censored talks
2013 03 21
By Henrik Palmgren and Elizabeth Leafloor | Red Ice Creations

TED, globally known as a showcase of ideas, hosts “fascinating thinkers and doers” who occupy a stage for 18 minutes or less to share their ideas with a global audience. Started in 1984, TED began as “a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader.” Source

TED is often seen as presenting a non-profit forum of thoughts and concepts that would otherwise be missed by the mainstream and insulated research communities.

The progeny project, TEDx, is “designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.” Source

There are critics of such events, with the talks being described as “elitist”, and monstrosities “that turns scientists and thinkers into low-level entertainers”.

Joe Rogan talks to Eddie Huang about his experience at the TED conference. (Language)

Recently TEDx has come under fire for what many see decry as censorship.

From the TED Wikipedia entry:

In March 2013, TED drew considerable controversy and accusations of censorship when it decided to delete the TEDx Whitechapel talks of Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock from its TEDTalks YouTUBE channel. After several days of online protests TED retracted its original statements by crossing them out and publishing rebuttals from both Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock. They also put the videos up in a framed fashion in a non-searchable part of its own web site. TED then also invited discussions on the TED talks in question. To-date the talks have not been put back on the TED Talks YouTUBE Channel. Source


Video: The War on Consciousness - Graham Hancock’s censored talk at TEDxWhitechapel

Further, stonemason and historical detective Jim Vieira’s TED talk on “Stone Builders, Mound Builders and the Giants of Ancient America” was also removed from the TEDxTalks YouTube channel in December 2012.

Red Ice Radio has hosted all three researchers, whose work have caused such controversy with TED.

Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion

Graham Hancock - Entangled, Supernatural, Shamanism, The Origins of Consciousness & The Destiny of America

Ross Hamilton, Jim Vieira & Hugh Newman - Giants, Mound Builders & Etheric Energy

There are many who see these actions by TEDx as smears and concealment of alternative research. In short, TEDx has slighted the three researchers and has failed to adequately respond to the legitimate complaints about the removal of the videos.

TED’s mission statement reads:
“We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.”


What if those ideas are ‘dangerous’? What if they’re outside the norm, on the fringe? What happens when you censor these talks so that NOBODY can engage?

It would have been more intellectually honest to simply invite opposing viewpoints to speak at TEDx than suggesting, as TEDstaff has done, that “the hardest line to draw is science versus pseudoscience. TED is committed to science”, while censoring talks that offend or frighten a small consensus of mainstream thinkers . (Source)

The talks were apparently removed because they were flagged as unscientific - that is, they were perceived to be opposite to the understanding and consensus of the facts by scientific peers.

Consensus is a word that is thrown around liberally in scientific arguments, but prior to his untimely death, physician, producer, and writer Michael Crichton spoke clearly about the place of ‘consensus’ in science:

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What are relevant are reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period. (Source)


In light of the current controversy and the resulting fallout, it might be helpful to remember that TEDx should be free to host (or deny) whomever they want. The talks are their arena, their outlet, and they do indeed have the right to set the tightly regulated guidelines for the talks that occur under their banner and crafted image. However, the main point of critique is that TED doesn’t seem to be interested in addressing any of the counter arguments made by Hancock or Sheldrake properly. Although they claim these talks border on ‘pseudo-science’, they cannot provide debate, they can only anonymously censor these ‘dangerous ideas’.

If TED doesn’t want to host these kinds of speakers, those who do wish to learn from these maligned researchers and do appreciate their work should from this day turn away from TEDx and other establishment, funding-driven, ‘scientific consensus’ exhibitions. Those who are willing to hear the other side should stop supporting TED and look elsewhere for answers.

Considering that TED and TEDx are obviously not interested in ideas that go outside of a very tightly regulated paradigm, set entirely by them, researchers like Graham, Rupert, Jim and others who are aspiring to bring this kind of information to the forefront should no longer support these conferences with their material and research, since it’s completely unappreciated by the organizers. People who also find the work of alternative researchers interesting should no longer organize TEDx talks and in this manner boycott the TED brand name.

MANY other communication venues exist. People do not necessarily need to try to ‘force’ TEDx to change their ways. Turning a collective back on the established cabal will change nature’s course. If TED is uninterested in the areas where the most fascinating, cutting edge, and advanced thought is coming from, people need not look to TED for answers.

The TED community seems to want to exist in a vacuum of isolated ideas. Eventually, such self-congratulatory scientism in this veritable echo-chamber of speeches will cause the community to stagnate. TED is the mainstream, and it behooves us to stop supporting and organizing for those who cannot go further than ‘safe’.

We must organize ourselves. If you want to get it done, you will need to do it yourself. There are no easy answers to the questions challenging speakers and researchers like Sheldrake, Hancock, and Vieira, but the more we share the information, the more minds will be engaged and awakened.

We will have those answers.


By Henrik Palmgren and Elizabeth Leafloor | Red Ice Creations

[FourthBase]

It'd be cool if there were a "Too Hot For TED" conference. Has there been?

By the way, Christopher Ryan's February talk is still not uploaded, far as I can tell.
There's just this one, from last year:



Here's the writeup on the February talk:

http://blog.ted.com/2013/02/28/the-vast ... t-ted2013/

Humans have sex like apes

Christopher Ryan begins his talk with a strong reminder, “We didn’t descend from apes. We are apes.” A special kind, but we are one. We’re closer to chimps and bonobos than they are to any other primate. But he wants to know, “What kind of ape are we? Particularly in terms of our sexuality.”

That’s a subject he’s been investigating as the co-author, with Cacilda Jethá, of Sex at Dawn. He says that there has been a standard narrative — that men and women are locked in an eternal struggle. That throughout history men have “leased” women’s sexuality in return for security.

This narrative is mistaken. It turns out that in many societies those things were shared in what he calls a “fierce egalitarianism.” Ryan makes it clear that he is not saying they were noble savages. But he notes that that social structure did exist, and is further saying this extends to sexuality. That “human sexuality has essentially evolved, until agriculture, as a way of maintaining and establishing the complex social networks that our ancestors were very good at.” He is also quick to note he is saying ancestors were promiscuous, but is not saying they were having sex with strangers, because, “There were no strangers.”

This is also not to criticize monogamy. “To argue that our ancestors were sexual omnivores,” says Ryan, “is no more a criticism of monogamy than arguing that our ancestors were dietary omnivores is a criticism of vegetarianism.”

Evidence from anatomy and anthropology

Where did our misconceptions about sex come from? Well, Darwin, as it turns out, was a world-class Victorian prude. He was fascinated by the colorful genital swelling in bonobos, but what he didn’t know is that female chimps have sex 1-4 times an hour with up to a dozen partners. Furthermore, Ryan notes that female chimps are sexually available for 40% of their menstrual cycles, but bonobos for 90% — almost as much as humans, who are capable of engaging in sex at any point in their cycle. That is a trait that is vanishingly rare among mammals.

For Ryan, a key question to understanding the origin of human sexuality is, “Are human beings a species that evolved in the context of sperm competition?” Are they competing against each other or with the sperm of other men as well? It doesn’t seem to be the case. For example, the average human has sex about a thousand times per birth. “If that seems high to you,” laughs Ryan, “don’t worry, it seems low to other people in the audience.” A more typical number among apes is to have sex about a dozen times per birth. Additionally, Ryan notes, humans and bonobos are among the only animals that have sex face to face. They also have external testicles. Says Ryan, ”External testicles are like having an extra fridge in the garage for beer. If you’re the kind of guy that has a beer fridge, you expect a party to happen at any moment.”

The evidence that the standard model isn’t correct extends beyond anatomy to anthropology. When one looks, they find all kinds of societies which have sexual practices that should not exist if the standard model is correct. In one culture, they found no shame about sex, and women with many lovers — some with well over 100. Who takes care of the children of those unions? The responsibility falls to the mother, her sisters and brothers. The biological father has no role.

In the Amazon basin, there are a few societies where a child can have many fathers. Those cultures believe that a fetus is made of accumulated semen. A woman who wants a child who is smart, funny and strong will have sex with one man who is smart, one who is funny and one who is strong. When the child is born, each of these men will come forward. Paternity is a team endeavor.

What does this mean?

Why is this important? Ryan is worried: “Our evolved nature is in conflict with many aspects of the modern world…. There is a conflict between what we feel and what we’re told we should feel.”

He hopes that thinking about the origin of sex will make us become more tolerant of alternative arrangements than the Victorian models. And most importantly, to “finally put to rest the notion that men have an innate right or instinctive need to control women’s sexual behavior.” He says our real fight is not between the genders, but with “an outdated Victorian notion of morality, that conflates desire with property rights.”

In other words: Forget about “men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Men are from Africa, and women are from Africa.”

[JackRiddler]

It'd be cool if there were a "Too Hot For TED" conference. Has there been?

Occupy Ted! I suppose the Left Forum is one example.

Maybe there is a pattern, when that "apes" talk - obvious and vulgar, surely too simple, not at all counterintuitive - isn't posted yet, but some other bullshit from freakonomists about upload this phone app to feed the world already is. And that pattern is the shape of hegemonic prejudices and worldviews in the culture at large, I suppose - in this case, the worldviews of upper-mid, upper class, tech-savvy academic American corporates. Respectable people. Reputations to maintain. Winners all. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe you need a "Best of the Losers" conference.

[FourthBase]

It'd be cool if there were a "Too Hot For TED" conference. Has there been?

Occupy Ted! I suppose the Left Forum is one example.

Maybe there is a pattern, when that "apes" talk - obvious and vulgar, surely too simple, not at all counterintuitive - isn't posted yet, but some other bullshit from freakonomists about upload this phone app to feed the world already is. And that pattern is the shape of hegemonic prejudices and worldviews in the culture at large, I suppose - in this case, the worldviews of upper-mid, upper class, tech-savvy academic American corporates. Respectable people. Reputations to maintain. Winners all. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe you need a "Best of the Losers" conference.

Whoa, seriously, the bolded? Or within invisible air-quotes?

Yes, to everything else. However:
If it's going to be a real alternative, then it can't simply be a Left thing.
There ought to be room, within a wide room, with distant limits, for the non-Left.
So, no, absolutely no Nazis. But, yes, advocates against, say, political correctness, identity politics, etc.

[JackRiddler]

It'd be cool if there were a "Too Hot For TED" conference. Has there been?

Occupy Ted! I suppose the Left Forum is one example.

Maybe there is a pattern, when that "apes" talk - obvious and vulgar, surely too simple, not at all counterintuitive - isn't posted yet, but some other bullshit from freakonomists about upload this phone app to feed the world already is. And that pattern is the shape of hegemonic prejudices and worldviews in the culture at large, I suppose - in this case, the worldviews of upper-mid, upper class, tech-savvy academic American corporates. Respectable people. Reputations to maintain. Winners all. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe you need a "Best of the Losers" conference.

Whoa, seriously, the bolded? Or within invisible air-quotes?

Read it again. I mean the apes talk is obvious in the sense of obviously true. Generally speaking, we're apes and we fuck a lot and we do it around the month even when no procreative function could possibly be involved, and there's little natural evidence that we are naturally and exclusively lifetime monogamous. (Also, every vertebrate is just a little bit gay, to paraphrase Ginsburg.) This is also a vulgar truth, meaning: unmentionable in nice, self-respecting, self-affirming bourgeois society (wherein people think they're liberated but generally uphold the pretense that the old taboos against honesty about sex somehow protect children and maintain civilization, so don't talk about it too much). So I mean both of those words, obvious and vulgar, in a good way. The vulgate, the vernacular. It is also a simple truth and it's not counterintuitive. (This is the style of many Ted or Edge talks: Ha, you thought something until now but it was WRONG and the truth is completely the opposite!) These may be the reasons why Ted may be reluctant to put this talk out. It's dirty. Or maybe that has nothing to do with it.

But I can see where it sounded bad. Sorry for the misunderstanding!

[FourthBase]

It'd be cool if there were a "Too Hot For TED" conference. Has there been?

Occupy Ted! I suppose the Left Forum is one example.

Maybe there is a pattern, when that "apes" talk - obvious and vulgar, surely too simple, not at all counterintuitive - isn't posted yet, but some other bullshit from freakonomists about upload this phone app to feed the world already is. And that pattern is the shape of hegemonic prejudices and worldviews in the culture at large, I suppose - in this case, the worldviews of upper-mid, upper class, tech-savvy academic American corporates. Respectable people. Reputations to maintain. Winners all. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe you need a "Best of the Losers" conference.

Whoa, seriously, the bolded? Or within invisible air-quotes?

Read it again. I mean the apes talk is obvious in the sense of obviously true. Generally speaking, we're apes and we fuck a lot and we do it around the month even when no procreative function could possibly be involved, and there's little natural evidence that we are naturally and exclusively lifetime monogamous. (Also, every vertebrate is just a little bit gay, to paraphrase Ginsburg.) This is also a vulgar truth, meaning: unmentionable in nice, self-respecting, self-affirming bourgeois society (wherein people think they're liberated but generally uphold the pretense that the old taboos against honesty about sex somehow protect children and maintain civilization, so don't talk about it too much). So I mean both of those words, obvious and vulgar, in a good way. The vulgate, the vernacular. It is also a simple truth and it's not counterintuitive. (This is the style of many Ted or Edge talks: Ha, you thought something until now but it was WRONG and the truth is completely the opposite!) These may be the reasons why Ted may be reluctant to put this talk out. It's dirty. Or maybe that has nothing to do with it.

But I can see where it sounded bad. Sorry for the misunderstanding!

[Sounder]

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.



Jack wrote...

I wonder how well the rest of these claims would hold up.

I think that in your mind you already know how Grahams claims hold up.

His work, being already fully discounted by you requires no more of your attention whatsoever.


SLAD, thanks for posting the Rupert Sheldrake talk.

It is fitting that TED folk are forced into this petty stance toward disruptive ideation.

For me, the gist of Rupert’s 10 fallacies, such as the mind being an epiphenomena of the functioning of the brain, is that modern (mechanistic) expressions of science have an aesthetic commitment to the notion that being precedes consciousness. But happily enough this aesthetic is leaving people more cold by the day.

Leaving élites with the power and authority to define the ‘proper’ nature of being of the general population provides justification for lying and all kinds of other negative expressions of consciousness. We are tired of being ruled by passive emotions where rationality is just another product of politics.

We will remain ‘tired’ and dogged by the internal contradictions of this unconscious driver up until the point that we consciously confront the issue and clearly assert that consciousness precedes being.

Only in this way can we humans become humane.

[JackRiddler]

I think that in your mind you already know how Grahams claims hold up.

On the contrary, I only checked one claim from an author named Jonathan Black posted up-thread at viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36178&start=30#p495857. Jonathan Black, not Graham. Can't be said often enough. In that article I noticed a claim about Jonathan Swift, an author I know, and I vaguely remembered the passage from Gulliver's Travels so I checked it. Isn't that a novel idea, checking it? Maybe you should try it with some of Black's other statements. Or, I'm sorry, do you perhaps find that checking the claims of an author you prefer to take and celebrate on faith is vulgar behavior?

Black's claim was not only mistaken but couched within a general, intentional-seeming frame of wrong: Swift did not predict Mars moons, he wrote a novel in which fictional Laputans discovered them; the orbital periods the Laputans mention are unrelated to those of the actual Mars moons; the later discoverers of the Mars moons absolutely did not name these Deimos and Phobos because they were scared and terrified of Swift's supernatural powers, as Black outrageously claims. This form of systematic mistakery indicates no interest in research or the truth, only in manufacturing points to support an agenda for the credulous. So yeah, I lose interest in whatever else Black (who is not named Graham) may have said.

I have said nothing whatever about Graham, and, as I have not provided you with an opinion of Graham, you will kindly refrain from preemptively stuffing words (of the kind that you obviously take to be indicative of a closed mind) into my mouth. Clearly, you already know how Graham's claims hold up, so don't project that on me.

[seemslikeadream]

Brooker: Scientific peer pressure

By Kevin Brooker, Calgary Herald March 25, 2013

For a certain category of armchair scientists and intellectuals, TEDTalks have become the catnip du jour. The New York-and Vancouver-based conference corporation, whose name originally reflected Technology, Entertainment and Design but whose concerns are now much broader, is beloved for its free, punchy, online videos of leading thinkers expounding Jobs-like on what it calls "ideas worth spreading."

This month, however, TED managed to rile up some of its more open-minded followers when it removed a pair of recent talks from its YouTube channel, a gesture that quickly bounced through social media as an egregious act of censorship- TED fans being nothing if not quick on the keyboard.

Of course, since nothing ever goes away on the Internet, it's still easy to watch both (and hey, they're short, which is partly why people like them). They're also provocative, no question. In one, author Graham Hancock describes a "war on consciousness" that prevents the world from gaining a higher state of awareness through shamanic principles and psychoactives like ayahuasca, the mystical South American potion of legendary status.

But it is the other one, by Rupert Sheldrake, that does even more to underscore a growing schism in scientific debate between classical materialists and, shall we say, more esoteric thinkers.

Sheldrake, though, is no easily dismissed hippie. He is a Cambridge biochemist with the most sterling credentials available. In Sheldrake's TEDTalk, loosely based on his recent book, The Science Delusion, he basically refutes 10 enduring dogmas which he claims are holding back legitimate scientific inquiry.

Sheldrake considers them no more than entrenched beliefs, for example, that the laws of nature are fixed for all time, that mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works, or that psychic phenomena are illusory. He contends there is abundant evidence to the contrary, such as the fact that the speed of light has been shown to be different at different times. Moreover, Sheldrake theorizes myriad paths of energetic interaction that endow all organisms, humans included, with a kind of genetic memory of events that occurred in the distant past.

Again, intriguing. And even though many mainstream scientists have expressed a willingness to entertain Sheldrake's radical hypotheses, the past few weeks have seen the usual chorus of voices - led by strict atheists - dropping the most damning slur of all: that Sheldrake is engaging in pseudo-science. Next stop, they allege, faith-based religion, a Darwinian no-no.

This seems endemic to our era. Just as there was once a bitter divide between proponents of an Earth-centred solar system and the Copernicans who declared the sun to be central, there are few realms of modern science that do not display a rift between some sort of "mainstream" and "alternative" ideations. On one side, we are allowing ourselves to be blinkered to possible realities. On the other, it's, well, shut up.

These days, however, materialist science has much else to worry about. One of the big concerns, in my view, is the fact that so many people who have worked at the heart of the scientific establishment appear to have serious misgivings about their business.

Frank admissions have crept into the discourse, none more candid than the 2006 bombshell by Richard Smith, a longtime editor of the British Medical Journal. After a lifetime as a gatekeeper for new ideas, Smith denounced one of the central pieties of modern science: that "peer review" is the single factor that separates good science from junk.

Yet peer review, according to Smith, amounts to little more than cleaving to intellectual fashion. Its practitioners have no rules, no training and no clearly established goals. That yields a deeply flawed process, he wrote, "full of easily identified defects with little evidence that it works. Nevertheless, it is likely to remain central to science and journals because there is no obvious alternative, and scientists and editors have a continuing belief in peer review. How odd that science should be rooted in belief."

[Sounder]

Mea Culpa Jack. I do not like to make excuses so hopefully this will serve as an explanation rather than excuses. I initially intended to write a bit, that will follow, but forgot about it when I sat down later and was victimized by a minor possession that was put to words while I was in a hurry to get on to other things. Sloppy and not at all rigorous, yes I know.

My first intention was to thank you for bringing the correction, and to add that people are always wrong about some particulars yet the substance resides in the totality of what is said rather than in the one particular element. When Copernicus asserted that planetary paths were circular because planets were round, he was wrong, yet the larger assertion was the more importantly correct one. Pedantic rationalists had a field day with him and Galileo over their inconsistencies. See Paul Feyerabend, and Against Method.


Jack wrote…

This form of systematic mistakery indicates no interest in research or the truth, only in manufacturing points to support an agenda for the credulous. So yeah, I lose interest in whatever else Black (who is not named Graham) may have said.

Back to now. But you are interested enough in what Mr. Black said to pore through his article looking for fallacies. If you had found more than this one somewhat minor and (unfortunately) commonly accepted fallacy, I am sure you would have pointed them out. This one fallacy hardly qualifies as being systemic. On the other hand, the fallacies that Rupert Sheldrake points to for instance are way systemic, fuck it is the system. But I suppose it’s not credulousness if it’s shared by enough people.

So, and I find it funny to have unwittingly illustrated the point with my embarrassing ignorance in the previous post, the question remains about which assumption comports more closely with reality and nature. Does being precede consciousness as the modern mentality would have it, or does consciousness precede being? People may continue to resist seeing this as an important or even relevant question, but as I am confident that consciousness evolves someday it will be addressed.

Thankfully the answer will not hinge one whit on mine or Jonathan Blacks ignorance.

[justdrew]

[undead]

^^^^^^ That is really funny. The Onion comes through as usual.

One big question that I forgot to put in this thread - where are the TED talks elaborating the myriad medical uses of cannabis? Furthermore, where are the TED talks on amygdaline, Berzinski, and other suppressed cancer treatments? What about Bob Beck? What about Wilhelm Reich and Nikola Tesla? I am not at all convinced of TED's "innovation". The really innovative ideas have always been suppressed, and I think that the purpose of TED is mainly to filter the ones that rich technocrats want to suppress.

These are the two cannabis related talks I found. Nothing about the medical use, even though there are hundreds of peer-reviewed studies to support it. Nothing about the revolutionary benefits in cancer treatment that are undeniable. This should be front page news and it has been established fact since the 1970s.

[undead]

Also, in relation to the OP, the issues addressed by Hancock and Sheldrake would be much better addressed by researchers who are discovering the physical health benefits of ayahuasca and ibogaine as well as cannabis. That would at least quiet the militant atheists who object, but unfortunately these researchers would never be allowed anywhere near TED, for obvious reasons.

[seemslikeadream]

TED conference censorship row

PAUL BIGNELL SUNDAY 07 APRIL 2013

With over 500 million YouTube views, TED Talks have attracted guest speakers such as Bill Gates, Richard Dawkins and Julian Assange and in the process, made conferences cool again.

But in recent weeks TED Talks – with their mantra - ‘ideas worth sharing’ - have been accused of censorship after two British speakers had their talks removed from TED’s official website.

The row involves two British speakers, the journalist and author Graham Hancock and Cambridge and Harvard University lecturer Rupert Sheldrake. Both speakers have been deemed as ‘provocative’ amid accusations of ‘pseudoscience’ at lectures they gave at a TEDx talk – a franchised spin-off of the main TED Talk brand. Hancock describes a ‘war on consciousness’ that prevents the world from gaining a higher state of awareness through shamanic principles and psychoactives like the South American potion, ayahuasca.

Rupert Sheldrake, a biochemist gave a speech which was loosely based on his book, The Science Delusion in which he refutes enduring dogmas which he claims are holding back legitimate scientific enquiry.

Both speakers who spoke at the TEDx conference in east London last month had their speeches pulled from its YouTube channel. After complaints from Sheldrake and Hancock and many TED viewers, their videos were reinstalled, but not on the main website – ‘in the naughty corner’ as Mr Hancock described it.

Hancock and Sheldrake have also called for the anonymous science board which advises TED on the legitimacy of speakers, to be revealed –something which TED is refusing to do, citing they are unpaid volunteers.

At the talks, speakers are given 18 minutes to present their ideas, which range from a mixture of science and culture through to storytelling.

But in recent months, a series of controversies dogged the not-for-profit organisation and whose acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, leading many to question the integrity of the organisation which charges audiences several thousands of pounds to watch a speech, yet pays its speakers nothing. In 2009, TED decided to license its brand allowing anyone, around the world to stage ‘TEDx’ events.

Last week in California, officials withdrew the license awarded to organisers of TEDx West Hollywood. Organisers said the conference theme who were talking about the reality of ESP, was “pseudoscience”.

Graham Hancock, said: “I think it comes down to the management of popular culture, rather than leaving people to make up their own minds.

“I think the dilemma that TED found themselves in, was as a corporate brand they didn’t want to be associated with these talks which they had put out on their TEDx YouTube channel. But then when they find it doesn’t fit their corporate brand, they reserve the right to take them down again,” he said.

In a statement, TED said: “The reason people are upset is because they think there has been censorship. But it’s simply not true. Both talks are up on our website. If you Google them you will find them immediately. Both have attracted significant views and numerous comments. This whole flap stems from an initial alert put out by one of the speakers that he thought he might be about to be censored. And when you shout censorship on the Internet, it’s like shouting fire in a cinema. It causes chaos regardless of whether it’s true. In this case it was a misunderstanding on his part. We had made clear from the start that these talks were not being removed from the web

.”