The War on Consciousness Debate

There has been a lot of debate recently about the decision by TED to remove the the TEDx talks given by Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake from the TEDx YouTube channel.  The original TED Scientific Board's Statements said "Rupert Sheldrake bases his argument on several major factual errors, which undermine the arguments of talk." and "Grahm Hancock's talk, again, shares a compelling and unorthodox worldview, but one that strays well beyond the realm of reasonable science." 

Both Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock responded to the statement's issued by the TED Scientific Board, and Graham Hancock very publicly took to social media to assert censorship.

In response to the outcry of censorship, TED re-posted the talks on it's blog with the "warning" that the talks are both provocative and have factual problems with their arguments.

View the original statement from TED's Scientific Board, the responses by Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake on TED's blog Open for discussion: Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake from TEDxWhitechapel

The TED's revised statement regarding the talks can be also be found on TED'sGraham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake, a fresh take blog.

I'm not going to try to argue who was right and who was wrong here, there is a place for that in the discussion forum on the videos. I applaud TED for re-posting the videos for people to see,  it's important that we look at other peoples viewpoints, take them all in, think about them, and form our own opinions. 

Did TED exercise censorship when they removed the talks, do the talks delve into the realm of pseudo-science, is this all just a great big misunderstanding that got blow way out of proportion? Watch the talks and decide for yourself, let me know your thoughts in the comments.