Sunday 24 August 2008

Unfortunatly Bad Science

Dr. Masaru Emoto and a number of other scientists have been studying water's reaction to thought. Emoto is known for his controversial claim that if human speech or thoughts are directed at water droplets before they are frozen, images of the resulting water crystals will be beautiful or ugly depending upon whether the words or thoughts were positive or negative. Emoto claims this can be achieved through prayer, music or by attaching written words to a container of water. For example, he typed out words on a piece of paper and pasted these written words onto a bottle of water, froze it overnight to see how the water reacted to the words. The crystals that formed were then photographed using a microscope. Those given positive words, like 'Thank You', produced beautiful snowflake crystals, while those infected with negative thoughts, like 'You Make Me Sick', turned out looking gross. As we are 65-90% water, the extension of this theory is that by pure thought we can change ourselves. The entire concept is just amazing and mind blowing. The problem is that Emoto's science is more than a little bit shoddy, and he has been criticized for his lack of experimental controls. He even admits he is not a scientist. In the day-to-day work of his group, the creativity of the photographers rather than the rigor of the experiment is an explicit policy of Emoto. Photographers are instructed to select the most pleasing photographs. When given that much freedom, and when looking at something at a microscopic level, even within one bottle a number of different images could be found. As you can see the experiments were designed in ways that leave them open to human error which influence the findings. Sad, because the thought of it all is so cool.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"By pure thought we can change ourselves" - maybe not proved by these experiments but proven elsewhere in the work done in developing Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). Thought, behavior and emotion are all linked and change can occure in one of the 3 and impact the other 2. Therefor changing thoughts can change behaviour and emotion.
Mum