In fairness to Sheldrake, he writes about these ideas, and then goes off to test them. See Seven Experiments that Could Change the World, and his later books which tested the effects.
A meta-analysis has supported the sense of being stared at. I will find the link later and included it. I believe it was in the British Journal of Social Pyschology around 2005.
Of the seven experiments that Sheldrake describes in his book, the phenomena of dogs (and other pets) knowing when their owners are coming home, has been empirically verified in many instances, and anecdotally verified by thousands of pet owners the world over - and at least a couple of friends. It certainly deserves some serious scientific inquiry rather than being dismissed out-of-hand as "ergo jesus" (as per the blog post above) or woo-woo. His other proposed experiment on phantom limbs and the real pain they can cause, on the other hand (no pun intended) has been fully explained and even solved by neuroscientist V. Ramachandran in his book "Phantoms of the Mind".
My issue with this sort of unexplained phenomena is that people are willing to jump to ridiculous conclusions that invalidate or at least poke a hole through physics/chemistry/biology/all the other layers of scientific knowledge, vs trying to look for explanations within the established framework of knowledge. The amount of scientific knowledge we've accumulated so far is huge. It's been very thoroughly tested through multiple independent experiments, quantitative relationships have been verified to ridiculous precision.
It's just astronomically more likely that a dog sensing their owner's arrival is going to be explained within the framework of established science, and not invalidate every layer of our model of the world from mammal biology to quantum foam.
I'd add that if one can sense a stare, this opens the door to a huge array of psychic abilities. Perhaps we can communicate more than a stare, perhaps this really all is pseudo-science, experimental bias, and statistical anomaly. I'd like to know.
The mechanism may be as simple as the brain's high sensitivity to electromagnetic fields from other brains, or as mysterious as a cosmic consciousness.
On a side note, Jessica Utts is wonderful.
I actually did my undergraduate thesis on this, but didn't find a significant effect (there was an effect, but the study was underpowered).
If they could truly change the world he should totally follow up on them and test them beyond reasonable doubt. There's potentially seven Nobel prizes in the bag, fame, fortune. Even empirically ruling out those seven ideas would be a worthwhile endeavor.
But, you know, selling books and doing TED talks. Ok. Fine. Whatever.
Another scientist, Dean Radin in his books - "The Conscious Universe" and "Entangled Minds" has compiled a very detailed and persuasive meta-analysis of experiments and phenomena that defy conventional scientific explanations.
A meta-analysis has supported the sense of being stared at. I will find the link later and included it. I believe it was in the British Journal of Social Pyschology around 2005.