No, sorry, you can't morph water crystals with your mind...

I believe just about everyone I know has seen the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know!?". While a lot of people I knew liked it a lot (um... let's call them the 'hippies'), a select few (including myself) hated this piece of drivel with every thread of my being. Ok, that's an exaggeration, I actually really tried hard to like it, 'cause at the time I thought I should be trying to be all new-agey, but it didn't work. I just couldn't ignore the fact that none of their panel of 'experts' made any sense whatsoever, and the whole thing felt like it was just strung together with dental floss and chewing gum and stamped with "Elitist Hippy Garbage That If You Don't Understand You're Probably Un-enlightened" in big shiny letters. None of it made sense. I don't know how everyone else felt it had something important to say, 'cause I didn't understand a word of it. I guess that happens when you insist on not using concrete examples to back up what you're saying, and instead rely on the know-it-all attitude of your so-called "experts" to coerce your audience into thinking that they'd better at least pretend they understand, or they're stupid or un-enlightened.

Aaaanyways... I overheard a conversation the other day about the water crystal experiment that was shown in that movie - you know the one where people thought good thoughts and the crystals that were formed in that water bottle looked real uniform and purdy and the crystals formed from bad thoughts looked all non-uniform and icky? Here's a breakdown:

Crystal experiment

The whole water crystal "experiment" wasn't actually an experiment at all. It was just some guy who randomly taped the words "love and gratitude" and "you make me sick", and played Mozart symphonies and heavy metal music to water bottles. I laughed particularly hard at the "heavy metal music" one. I mean, my god, I can't think of anything more subjectively experienced than music - who the hell is to say that a Mozart symphony is somehow better (or purer, or whatever the hell point Dr. Emoto was trying to make about it) than heavy metal? So, even if this was a controlled experiment, you can't just arbitrarily assign something a value of "good" versus "bad" to thoughts and music. But I digress... this was NOT a controlled experiment. This was a dude just randomly taping things to water bottles and playing music to said water bottles, and then randomly taking water from the water bottles and forming crystals from the water bottles, which he then drew dramatic, mind-boggling conclusions from. He had no controls, and simply finding one nice crystal from the "good thoughts" water bottle, and one, um, ugly crystal from the other bottles was enough for him to conclude that our thoughts affect water. He's making extraordinary claims that need extraordinary evidence to back him up. I also have no idea how he controlled for other thoughts that might have affected the water between performing the "experiment" on it and making it form crystals. He also knew which bottle to find what kind of crystal in - in other words, he didn't use double blind procedures. So, in taking a water crystal from a bottle that read "Prayer", he had already decided he'd find good-lookin', uniform crystals in this bottle. Yeah, the thing is, real science actually relies on real experiments, not just random observations made by some quack doctor that just happen to coincide with his own worldly views.

If you want to learn more, go to:

JREF on water crystal experiments

James Randi talks about it a bit here as well (scroll down to "talking to water" part - you'll see the pictures of the crystals). He is just as befuddled by it as I am.

The sad thing about this is it has become one of those urban myths that everyone who considers themselves up on the whole "energy" or "chi" conundrum decides to help spread around. And thus Dr. Emoto makes his money off gullible people, who really just want to believe in something... But belief doesn't make things real, no matter how many times you watch The Secret (at least, not in any way more than a self-fulfilling prophecy, psychological phenomenon kind of way). I mean, sure, think positively - focus on the good in your life and common sense tells you you'll be a happier person. Just don't expect it to change the physical nature of your atoms.

Okay, well I'm done ranting for the day. I really wanted to write about Sarah Palin and her gong-show, religious ideas about creationism and abortion, and how McCain is HORRIFYINGLY actually ahead in the polls right now, but I won't. I have to stop thinking about the States right now or my head will explode.

Cheerio!