Earlier this month, The New Republic republished a highly critical blogpost about author Rupert Sheldrake. Jerry Coyne, a University of Chicago professor and the author of Why Evolution is True referred to Sheldrake as a "pseudoscientist" and lampooned the allegation that Sheldrake was being persecuted by "militant skeptics." Coyne's piece also derided Deepak Chopra, the physician and alternative medicine figure who has been one of Sheldrake's defenders. Chopra responded with this letter to the editor—and Coyne, in turn responds to the letter below:

To the Editors,

I have a suspicion that readers of The New Republic aren't aware that skepticism has become a bullying, strident movement redolent of the worst aspects of the Internet. Jerry Coyne tosses around the term "pseudoscientist" as if it were a given when applied to Rupert Sheldrake and by implication to me. He, then, must represent real science, a standard that his article doesn't meet.

I can't speak for my respected friend Rupert Sheldrake, although it's typical of Coyne's slash-and-burn tactics that he refers to Sheldrake as having trained at Cambridge University while leaving out that he held respected senior positions in biology there. In my own case, to be sneeringly tagged as a pseudoscientist is an absurd allegation.

Here are a few examples of my recent participation in real science.