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IT has been revealed that a multi-millionaire businessman who passed on tragically in August was fascinated by the psychic abilities of dogs.
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MICHAEL LYNCH did not believe
in “anything weird.”
(Photo: The Royal Society) |
Mike Lynch, 59, went missing with his daughter, friends and crew when freak weather caused his £30 million superyacht Bayesian to capsize off the Sicilian coast. Fifteen people, including Mr Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares, made it to safety.
An intensive search for survivors on the Bayesian finally led to the recovery of the entrepreneur’s body, along with those of his eighteen-year-old daughter Hannah and five other passengers and crew.
Investigators continue to study why the 184-foot luxury vessel sank within sixteen minutes during a fierce thunderstorm. The yacht has yet to be raised from the seabed.
Technology expert and celebrity biographer Jonathan Margolis wrote in The Independent that Mr Lynch contacted him after he wrote a book titled Uri Geller: Magician or Mystic: The Truth in 1998.
Mr Margolis followed this up with The Secret Life of Uri Geller – CIA Masterspy in 2013.
The author revealed that Mr Lynch wanted to initiate a research project into the telepathic and psychic abilities of dogs.
He was intrigued by the possibility that they could sense when their owners were beginning a journey home. Mr Lynch adored his six dogs.
The tycoon told Mr Margolis he had “done this informal experiment many times. I’ll get on a train in London for our house in Suffolk and at that exact second, they will get excited.
“My wife and I have ruled out as many possible clues as we can. She’ll note the moment they start barking and it will match up with me stepping onto the train.”
Aware that this went against his reputation for scientific expertise, Mr Lynch told Mr Margolis “I’m not a parapsychologist or a paranormalist. I don’t believe in auras or energies, or anything weird.
“I’m firmly entrenched in science. I know this is controversial, but there’s an effect out there that needs explaining.”
Such was the tycoon’s enthusiasm that he talked for nearly an hour-and-a-half about how he believed dogs have a knack for “reading” human emotions.
Mr Lynch studied the subject, commenting on the presence of “mirror neurons” in dogs similar to those in the human brain that help us to empathise.
“If I hit my hand with a hammer, you’ll wince,” Mr Lynch added. “It’s the basis of empathy.”
Mr Margolis described him as an inspiring teacher with a big brain, who “was patient when I lagged behind or got the wrong end of the stick.”
The entrepreneur developed a theory that dogs “run a model in their mind of what it’s like to be you or another dog. This is how they become pack animals.”
Mr Lynch was an exceptional mathematician and entrepreneur. He made his fortune on an understanding of statistics and pattern recognition, using them to create innovative and successful technology companies.
Bayesian was named after a method of predicting probabilities and adapting them to new data.
Strict procedures were to be used in proposed new research on the psychic abilities of dogs.
Mr Lynch stressed the importance of understanding “probability,” insisting it was time for experiments to be “redone properly” to determine if some dogs are capable of producing “statistically meaningful” outcomes.
He commented that dogs are “Bayesian calculators,” using intuition to see data in different ways.
Mr Margolis was encouraged by the tycoon to write a column which invited readers to share their psychic dog stories to establish a website to amass a database that investigators could work with.
The project did not take place. As an adviser to then Prime Minister David Cameron, Mr Lynch went away on a trip and Mr Margolis was living in New York at the time.
Additionally, for thirteen years Mr Lynch was embroiled in a notorious and costly court case after the US Department of Justice accused him of fraud.
Having spent £30 million on legal fees, against all the odds Mr Lynch was acquitted just weeks before the sinking of the Bayesian.
When the journalist told him that an article appealing for dog stories would not be published, Mr Lynch replied by e-mail, saying “That’s really sad. But thanks for trying.” Mr Margolis said, “He seemed truly upset.”
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