Emoto the Snowman

So I was wondering. If Emoto goes out and fancies a 99 ice cream cone can he make the flake become more shapely and delicious just by using positive intent?

This idle and essentially pointless thought discussion was in mid flow while I was hunting for any evidence of double blind experiments existing for his not weird, not outlandish, not at all freakishly unlikely in any way idea that water can be manipulated by thought and intent. Dogs are rubbish at this by the way, as are elk, fairy shrimp, moo cows, pygmy elephants, the star-nosed mole and in fact everything in creation except one insect. This single exception is the pond skater (Gerris lacustris), that can focus its intent to such an extent that it can stand like Jesus, defying science, pulling the water clusters to its feet to float freely above the unknown depths. 

It's frankly quite amazing, and the first tangible, solid evidence of the only being, other than man, capable of mentally manipulating water to its own ends.


But I digress.


Back to the elusive search for evidence. After much searching I found some, in the same way one might find evidence of a dog by looking on the sole of your shoe. Two experiments in fact, the second not even double-blinded, but triple-blinded! Well, I almost felt like I'd died and gone to heaven, which as an unbeliever was a deeply curious and mind-twisting experience. 
But sadly, the experiments conducted by Drs. Dean Radin, Gail Hayssen and Masaru Emoto B.A. failed overall to demonstrate much of anything.


Ok. Follow carefully. It's a bit like science because they use the words double blind. 


The first 'double blind' experiment involved four bottles of water. The two hero bottles were charged remotely with intent, three thousand miles away by two thousand of Emoto's followers in Japan by looking at a photo of the bottles in America. The other two were held separately in another room. Then all four bottles were dispatched to Japan where the great man's people froze and photographed fifty samples from each bottle, not knowing which was which. All in all, a selection of forty samples made their way back to America where Dr. Radin, a fan of Emoto's, showed the anonymous samples to a further two thousand people on the internet to be judged for their individual aesthetic appeal.


The result was deemed to be 'statistically significant' in favour of intent although how one experiment using just forty samples and loads of potential for bias, contamination, mistakes and luck can be deemed statistically significant in any way is a tad questionable. But we'll let that drift on by under the bridge of tries again.


So we come the second, a blinding attempt at a triple blind experiment, with just more criteria in place and pretty much the same technique. Both experiments still relied on doing everything 'in house' with Emoto running through every part of the process, safely enthroned in his Japanese ice palace. With the results published last year in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, they make less than impressive reading. Statistically the findings show no more than chance in all her glory, as the rough triple blind did take away a lot of the bias, hence the lack of any significance in the data. 


The treated samples scored a tiny bit higher in the beauty quotient than one set of controls, but then, the other control set marked highest of all. And none of the samples were felt to be particularly attractive anyway, scoring an average of 1.7 on a scale of an ugly 1 to the perfect loveliness of 6. And that's with three days of concentrated remote 'gratitude' focusing from around two thousand people at another bottle photograph. To reiterate- that's three days of two thousand intensely positive intent-pulsing believers, producing a statistical non-event. 


All this means is that chance had as ever, a large part to play, freezing any statistical benefit in its tracks before cheekily making an Emoto snowman. Dr. Radin still saw significance everywhere, against all the odds, who'd have guessed. Though at least, to his credit, he honestly tried to put in place a reasonable set of practices to compensate for Emoto's crazy ways. But as previously mentioned, the more bias was removed, the closer to chance the results become, as is often the way when pseudo-science is closely inspected. Often? I'm being kind. 


If gratitude, love, or writing 'I hug you' really could make water form prettier snowflakes than intent-free water, then I guarantee it wouldn't need a photo-finish and a steward's inquiry. But don't despair. The sky's full of millions of tumbling hexagonal crystals every winter and they're ever beautiful, all by themselves, no intent required. For that, we should be eternally grateful.



                   

Emoto the Miracle Man- turning water into fine wine dining...




So, Dr. Emoto is coming to Glastonbury on the 18th of November, bringing water revelations with him to share with eager Glastafarians. And revealings of such truths never come cheap. For £20, he will show you slides of pretty, love influenced snowfakes, sorry, my bad... snowflakes and sell you books, CDs, DVDs and bottles of magic water*. This is the man who has gained a wonderfully official sounding 'Dr.' title from the Open International University of Alternative Medicine in India. I kid you not. The man who believes that the ice crystals he photographs are actually spirits and that we came to this world in giant spheres of ice. That taking many photographs of crystals then choosing the one that most agrees with his idea, (that ice crystals, and by extension, water, can be affected on a molecular level by intent) is scientific. It's really, really not. Emoto is indeed a fascinating character.


*He was, on his website, until recently, selling something he calls Indigo water- a small bottle of 'highly charged hexagonally structured water' for $35 a pop. Which is water, charged with happy thoughts and which can 'super-hydrate someone better than normal water' because it's hexagonally structured. Um, yes... no surprise there then. I was going to remove a description of him as a consummate fraud and a fool as I felt I was being unduly harsh and he's probably a nice bloke but I think after seeing this sales pitch, I'll let it stand.


Here's an interesting yet scary link... "Conscious Water Crystals: The Power of Prayer Made Visible"  


The shape and complexity of ice crystals are directly linked to temperature and humidity as water vapour freezes. Also, water with a high particulate content will form crystals more readily than distilled water as the forming crystals are essentially seeded by the little bits of dust and matter. 
High humidity gives a complex six spiked star shape, low humidity, a simple hexagon. The same goes for temperature, as, according to the Caltech website, ice crystals form stars and plates at -2 C , giving way to columns and needles at around -5 C. These in turn give way to the hexagonal stars and plates again at around -15 C, then by -30 C we have a combination of columns and plates. That's the science but way back at Woo Central, Dr. Emoto is still immune to sense, logic or reasoning ability. 


And, existentially, just how are we supposed to measure or define 'Anger' or 'Love', as it hurtles its way towards the jar of unsuspecting water? These are anything but objective feelings and so can't be quantified. Emoto manages it though. Curiously, he can't replicate the shape of any ice crystal even though he might direct 'Ennui' three times at different water vessels. Aren't snowflakes supposed to be renowned for all being unique? Hmmm? Eh? (I'm trying to get his attention by poking him with an icicle.)
And he's discovered that writing words on a piece of paper and sticking it to the outside of the glass works too. When the water evaporates, the evil intent behind the phrase, 'I hate you,' makes the ice form into columns, needles and irregular shapes, while the loving intent of 'I love you,' makes the regular, aesthetically pleasing shapes that the esteemed doctor has decided are therefore good. 
The trouble is, as the water vapour cools down through the temperatures, guess what happens? Any vapour forming solidly below -4 C on the inside of each maligned glass jar doesn't become a beautiful star, but an ugly, evil intent filled columnar ice crystal mass and so on down the range. This can lead to difficulties if you're aiming for a beautiful rainbow crystal of care, joy or peace. 
In reality, any photographs taken can easily show a full range of ice formations. One can find the irregular shapes and the star shapes and everything in between and its only when that old daftie Emoto chooses his favourite one that books can be written, sales can be rung through and gullibility proved to be ever increasingly popular. 


So, on the 18th of November, I'll hopefully be there, pouring my negatively charged water of disbelief onto the credulous fire of righteous New Agers. Or maybe I'll just charge their drinking water with a healthy dose of incredulity and sit back and enjoy the show. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.


For those interested, here's another interesting article from a retired chemistry professor http://www.chem1.com/CQ/clusqk.html