A scientist, whose research on telephone telepathy is funded by the respected Trinity College in Cambridge, announced recently that he has now proofs based on his conducted experiments that the phenomenon of receiving a telephone call from someone shortly after thinking about them is true. Rupert Sheldrake, who believes in the interconnectedness of all minds within a social grouping, said that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even e-mails.

The experiment for the telephone telepathy was conducted by having each respondent name four relatives or friends and their numbers. The relatives or friends were called at random and asked to ring the subject who had to identify the caller before answering the phone. "The hit rate was 45 percent, well above the 25 percent you would have expected. The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one," said Sheldrake during the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

The same result was also found with with people being asked to name one of four people sending them an e-mail before it had landed. But the Sheldrake's sample - 63 people for the controlled telephone experiment and 50 for the email - was too small, prompting skepticism about the accuracy of the findings. Still, Sheldrake is planning to test if the phenomenon also works for mobile phone text messages.