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How is mental telepathy defined? Telepathy is defined as "communication through means other than the senses," so add the "mental," and you have the concept of minds directly sending and receiving information without the senses. This might be by using something like radio waves, "thought waves," or whatever the various theories claim.
A True Story About Mental Telepathy
When we were children, my mother and father left one day, to visit relatives in another city an hour or two away. They went to play bingo at a church. My brother Andy, meanwhile, was thrown to the ground by a bully, and his collar bone was broken. Around that same moment, my mother stood up in the middle of the game, and announced to my father, "Andy has been hurt!" They immediately left and stared driving home.
Mental telepathy? It certainly seemed like it at the time, but is there another explanation? Possibly - more on that in a moment.
Evidence For Mental Telepathy
If we review the evidence for mental telepathy, it should take about a minute, because there is no good evidence. However, if we review what passes as evidence, we find a common pattern. The tests that "prove" this phenomenon are usually done in some way that is very flawed.
Often, "researchers" in ESP (extrasensory perception) and related areas have less of an interest in finding the truth than in proving that these things are real (in my opinion). This affects their experiments. Often it isn't a matter of dishonest intentions, but due to unconscious factors. The most common procedural error made in this type of research is that of "selecting" results.
If you guess what suit a playing card is, you would - by the odds - be right about 25% of the time, because there are 4 suits to choose from. Suppose a "sender" concenrates on the card while you guess. Suppose you try this in 10 trials of 20 cards each, and repeat this with 30 subjects, for a total of 300 trials. Even without telepathy, test subjects will do better than the odds dictate in some trials, and worse in others, right?
This is entirely normal. For example, a coin flipped many times doesn't alternate systematically between heads and tails, but flip it enough times, and it will average about 50% heads and 50% tails. At least it will if you tally all the flips. On the other hand, if you concentrate your mental powers on heads, and then don't count 100 of the flips that came up tails, and you have a test that "proves" you can affect the coin using the power of your mind alone.
Would real scientists (or those that claim to be) do this? Yes, sometimes, but it's usually more subtle. Consider card experiments. If a researcher believes strongly in mental telepathy, he might unconsciously find reasons to exclude non-confirming trials (the subject wasn't ready, the "sender" wasn't concentrating). Count trials with the results you want, and leave out "bad" trials, and you make it look like the subjects are indeed psychic.
Explaning Mental Telepathy - Or
Not
Gettting back to the story with my mother, here's a scenario: She knew Andy was having trouble with this bully. Earlier in the day she was nearby when Andy mentioned he was worried, because he had to deliver
But is that the explanation? No, it is one explanation. Unlike the approach used by true believers, a more rational approach is to leave questions open. Hypothesize, and perhaps test those hypothesis, but don't accept an answer before there is good evidence. It is more rational and useful to leave things unexplained than to invent things and believe in them just because we want them to be true. Maybe we will never have a good explanation for much of what is called "mental telepathy," but do we need one right now?