I believe many of you have heard about Masaru Emoto's findings regarding messages from water. This post would show my take on why his claims are vague and cannot be considered legitimate.
Masaru Emoto – Messages from Water
Name: Masaru Emoto
DOB: July 22, 1943.
Occupation: Writer
Education: Yokohama Municipal University, Open International University for Alternative Medicine (unaccredited)
Masaru Emoto’s Research
Masaru Emoto is the author of Messages from Water. He has documented in this book his discovery of the formation of water crystals through the influence of human speech, thoughts, prayers, songs and even pictures.
Name: Masaru Emoto
DOB: July 22, 1943.
Occupation: Writer
Education: Yokohama Municipal University, Open International University for Alternative Medicine (unaccredited)
Masaru Emoto’s Research
Masaru Emoto is the author of Messages from Water. He has documented in this book his discovery of the formation of water crystals through the influence of human speech, thoughts, prayers, songs and even pictures.
-
-
Before prayer ----------------------After prayer
-
-
Heavy metal music-------------------"Thank you"
Why Emoto is a Psuedo Scientist
Now Emoto’s work is pretty incredible, isn’t it? Amazing as it might sound, I think there are too many problems and loop holes in his research to quantify his claims as legitimate. And I’m not the only one. Scientists do not recognize Emoto’s work as authentic due to many reasons.
First of all, let us look at Emoto’s credentials. He graduated from an unaccredited institution. As much as this doesn’t support the fact that he isn’t credible, I think we should keep this in mind as we move along.
Next, let us look at Emoto’s occupation. A writer. Hmm. He had no scientific background and he did not conduct his experiments in certain necessary conditions. His research and experiments had insufficient experimental controls, and double-blind trials were not conducted. What this means is, the photographers knew what they were looking for when the snapped the pictures of the crystals, and Emoto explained that the creativity of the photographers was valued more than the rigor of the experiments.
According to an interview with John Woodhouse published in the Maui News, Emoto stated, “I did not start out with any modern scientific background. I did not even know the limit of science to stop me from giving this research a chance.” This statement alone is enough to dub Emoto as a pseudo scientist. He was not educated in the scientific community, and I believe that together with his artistic view of things in general, his “research” was made biased through the many mistakes committed.
Here are some of the mistakes made by Emoto:
1) He did not take into account of the effects physical phenomenons would have on the formation of the water crystals. Numerous environmental factors such as the most fundamental of all – temperature and humidity were not considered in his research. Factors like these would have substantial impact on the results of his study but Emoto did not conduct procedures to control them.
2) The Petri dishes used to contain the water samples were not sealed. The implication is that the samples used in his experiments could easily be contaminated by the environment or even the researcher himself. One good example would be that the photographer’s breath could affect the warming rate of the frozen samples, thereby affecting the temperature of the crystal formations. This implies that the beautiful crystals formed through “positive words” could have been mere coincidence.
-
3) Emoto indicated that his water samples were frozen at 25°C, and his crystals were formed at -5°C. According to the morphology diagram of ice crystal formation (Libbrecht), column crystals should be formed instead of plate crystals, yet none of Emoto’s pictures show a column crystal. Could Emoto have fabricated his findings? Let’s put it this way – he has no supportive data to back his claims.
4) Emoto has mentioned that in every test he would photograph 100 Petri dish samples, yet only one of each test was provided to the public. What if the other 99 went against his hypothesis? He has successfully prevented the media from uncovering the photos which did not support his research.
There was a lack of blind and double-blind procedures in Emoto’s experiments. Emoto believed that “the researcher’s aesthetic sense and character is the most important aspect when taking crystal photographs.” Let me rephrase this- The researcher photographs whatever supports his claims. An example of how Emoto could have added more credibility to his findings would be letting the photographers snap the pictures without first knowing what samples the Petri dishes contained. In this way, the photographer is “blind” and does not know what he’s looking for. Sadly, this crucial trial was ignored by Emoto.
Masaru Emoto would continue to be ignored by the scientific community if he does not prove his claims with better experimental controls, or disclose his methods to other scientist to allow further research. The lack of scientific evidence has ruled his findings as pseudo science, but I think he makes a good science fiction writer. I’d be first in line if he publishes his first science fiction novel.
As much as I shun Emoto’s dubious scientific claims, I have to say that he started his research work with a good cause. And I believe it is very true that whatever you say and think affect the people around you. No doubt about that, but Emoto’s research would only make a good bedtime read till he can further prove his claims.
There was a lack of blind and double-blind procedures in Emoto’s experiments. Emoto believed that “the researcher’s aesthetic sense and character is the most important aspect when taking crystal photographs.” Let me rephrase this- The researcher photographs whatever supports his claims. An example of how Emoto could have added more credibility to his findings would be letting the photographers snap the pictures without first knowing what samples the Petri dishes contained. In this way, the photographer is “blind” and does not know what he’s looking for. Sadly, this crucial trial was ignored by Emoto.
Masaru Emoto would continue to be ignored by the scientific community if he does not prove his claims with better experimental controls, or disclose his methods to other scientist to allow further research. The lack of scientific evidence has ruled his findings as pseudo science, but I think he makes a good science fiction writer. I’d be first in line if he publishes his first science fiction novel.
As much as I shun Emoto’s dubious scientific claims, I have to say that he started his research work with a good cause. And I believe it is very true that whatever you say and think affect the people around you. No doubt about that, but Emoto’s research would only make a good bedtime read till he can further prove his claims.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
44 comments for this post
wow.. black text on a black background.. am I really not seeing this?
Mee too..
It's probably to hide from Masaru Emoto suporters. :-)
I think it would be great if someone would attempt to recreate these experiments with truly scientific methods. Maybe they have and the results were not interesting, so I haven't heard about it.
When you have made the assumption thatMasaru research is not scientific (his work is from 1992) have you look at other work in this domain? as you publish this in 2008!!! Guess you shoul now about David Sereda research in feb 2008 with Saida Medvedeva but also about Professor Luc Montagnier, a French virologist who won the Nobel prize for discovering a link between HIV and AIDS, has shocked fellow Nobel prize-winners by telling them that water has a memory that continues even after many dilutions and also about quantum physics but I do understand that it is hard to understand by You, Mr William :)
So heres the thing, I've a little research into this for school papers and am actually working on a speech about this for one of my classes. I just wanted to point out that though his experments are poorly done and I dont fully agree with them, the concept of it is intersting. Because, in truth water might very well be reacting to our intentions.Just look at humans, we are made up of 90 to 94 percent of water. What we say do and think has huge impacts on us. just something to think of!
Thank u for trying to debunk and failing.
He mentioned that out of 100, the majority did not form beautiful crystals, just ordinary ones for the positive vibes and he took only the nice ones. Naturally, he had to choose from those for viewing.
For the negative vibes, they did not even form crystals for most and some showed ugly unexplained forms.
Expose the water to a word shared by two languages - a homophone or homograph, and choose a word that has a positive meaning in one language, and negative in the other.
How does the water choose which "vibration" to pick up on? What if the person writing (or copying) the word has no idea what the word means - how does the water know if it was meant with positive (good word) or negative (bad word) intent?
Same goes for using slang, such as "bad" - which can mean the exact opposite. How does the water "hear" the intended vibrations (good or bad) if a third party (who didn't see the word) affixes the label (covered so as to not expose the word) to the water container?
I believe PT Barnum was correct... there's a sucker born every minute.
Mr. Payne...there is a spiritual connection between water and humankind's inner intent- whether collectively or individually experienced at any given time. One doesn't have to believe that gravity exists at all, but their perspective about it is irrelevant to the fact that gravity exists. There is too much evidence science has not deemed important enough to fund / capture / document / record which proves the connection between the elements in general and native indigenous peoples. How far in a quest for peace do you think one should go to seed understanding when the person in need starts off standing where you're at about the whole thing? Is it worth to go in after your spirit when you start off so resistant?
I say yes. To the degree, to the degree. Conversion is awesome in a case like this, and you, my dear, are very much worth it.
Shall we?
These are highly valid points. Did you re-run the experiment using the appropriate controls (sealed dishes, temperature control, etc)? What were your findings?
Most whiners and people who set up mental blocks when faced with life changing information try to use science as their weapon, however I've come to find that 99% of people like this are only putting up a front and never actually do any real science themselves to prove the issues they are claiming. For those who actually did some type of experiment like the rice hado experiment, we know there is more to this than they want us to know about. So stop bitching and actually show us what type of science you did to prove otherwise. If you are going to harass someone's work then do it with something to show, not just a whiney complaint. I have seen a debunking video that doesn't even show in the film labeled jars, and doesn't show what human message was given if at all, in other words it looked like he just left 2 identical jars there and expected different results from doing nothing himself, idiot....
I agree that this is a debunk fail. He has a doctors degree in alternative medicine and if you know ANYTHING about alternative medicine its that its NATURAL. The "science" they try to teach us nowadays is totally against natures way. Other than that the U.N. has backed up Dr. Emoto as well in the scientific area along with admitted cures and accurate data from varies scientists.
The reactions to criticisms of this work has demonstrated that the vast majority of people are very, very easy to lie to, and that they actually prefer to be lied to because it makes them feel better about some aspect of their lives.
If you want to be the sort of person who questions things, then you can't just go halfway with it. You have to question the things that you'd very much like to be true. If you don't, then you don't actually have an open mind, no matter what you tell yourself, because you've closed yourself off to the possibility of being wrong.
as to conduct a scientific experiment,one must follow certain strict steps of method in order to make the results as non-bias as possible.
What Lew Payne posted here have given me a question.
If we look at the water with heavy metal music influence,it carries a distorted pattern.meaning it brings negativity.
BUT,what if the heavy metal song carries a very positive meaning?what will this create?
How about a soothing classical song or a lullaby but with extremely offensive vulgar sentences?
Anyway,I do agree on the notion that an experiment must be pure and unbiased through the application of strict methodology.
Scientist must speak and work on and for the truth,not for what they want to believe or perceive.if the result does not favour their conviction,just reveal the truth.
You can do you own experiment with rice, look up "rice experiment" on YouTube and see everyone else's "evidence". You cook some rice and divide it into identical containers and label one "love" and one "hate" - keep them in the same room and see what happens. How do you explain that?
Lew and Adzakael - if you tried heavy metal with a positive message or tried to "trick" the water using a pretty sounding lullaby with evil words I don't believe that would work. And it doesn't matter what language it's in. It's not the words or the sound...it's the vibrational frequency and intention. Anything good will vibrate at a higher frequency. Lew thinks the "believers" are suckers but the "believers" think you are close minded or unenlightened.
I don't think the author is discounting the possibility that Masaru Emoto could be right, he's just arguing that his methods are questionable and thus his results do not confirm or deny his hypothesis. The scientific method has many limitations, but one of its major strengths is that it provides a rigorous, reliable method for testing the validity of empirical claims; so reliable, in fact, that it is the overwhelmingly dominant method of testing such claims and expanding human knowledge about the world of the senses.
Masaru Emoto has made an empirical claim, yet he eschews the scientific method in favor of a more intuitive, yet ultimately less rigorous and thus less reliable method. You don't need to be "closed-minded" to reject Emoto's conclusions. You simply need to realize the simple fact that an empirical claim (e.g., "x causes y") is meaningless if it does not correspond to reality in any way (e.g., x does not cause y "out there"). And without testing according to the scientific method, it is not possible to know with any real degree of certainty that an empirical claim does or does not correspond to reality.
That all being said, I'm sure a lot of people believe Emoto's claims on a spiritual level. This has to be distinguished from scientific knowledge, however. Science makes no claim to study metaphysical questions about belief and spirituality; this is one of the limitations of the scientific method. Science only concerns itself with the physical world. It is strongly grounded on empirical observation and falsifiability, while spiritual beliefs are inherently unfalsifiable and based on personal idiosyncrasies.
Notwithstanding all that, Emoto's claims are implausible, and I doubt many scientists would bother exploring any of his claims concerning intentions for this reason. Resources are scarce.
in his experiments he has emphasised that good words have to be spoken with faith . saying good words without conviction brings u to no where . Also , there are many mystery and ancient religions who use prayer and thoughts on water and give it to patients who recover , so its not a new thing what Mr emoto is doing .
Anyone who has a grasp of science cannot take Emoto's finding as proof of anything. Without even going into specifics, scientific theories require rigorous proof. This proof is acquired through controlled, repeatable experiments. If any of those experiments do not verify the theory it is not proven. In that case the theory must be discarded or the reason for the discrepancy in observation must be explained, eliminated and the tests repeated.
No such scientific rigor has been applied to Emoto's experiments.
Believing in the result without scientific proof, is faith, not science.
1. "in his experiments he has emphasised that good words have to be spoken with faith . saying good words without conviction brings u to no where." Perfect loophole. Now, if someone else does the experiment and it doesn't produce his results, he can simply dismiss that by saying they didn't speak the words with enough "faith".
2. "Science makes no claim to study metaphysical questions about belief and spirituality; this is one of the limitations of the scientific method." Surely that's a strength, not a limitation.
Thanks for sharing your opinions on this blog, William. According to your reasoning, Leonardo da Vinci is also a pseudoscientist. Right? And we cannot trust any of his research because he was much too artistic. Right? And also because he didn't have any of the proper modern scientific controls. Right? And neither did most scientists in the past so they should be all discredited. Right?
I agree, there was little of the scientific method at play here. I also agree that to study under more controlled conditions could prove very interesting. Check this out, they are trying to rais the funds right now to do just that! http://is-masaru-emoto-for-real.com/emoto-research-study/
Until a scientist comes in and says "Yah, i approve this..." Then they all say its gospel truth. The bottom line is that most claiming to even speak in the name of science are playing the "Be on the winning team" game. I don't know about you but im shaking in my shoes because theres no peer review report. hey heres a great concept-- See if it works! Stop waiting for all these fools to tell you it is or it isn't because even if they did... Ummm. What exactly is their perogative in telling you? I get it. Wait another 100 years so your kids may find out if its true or not. GREAT PLAN.
did you attempt to re create his experiment? did you remove all instances conceivable by you, to properly improve on his work?
The reason for controlled, repeatable experiments is so they can be peer reviewed and VERIFIED - or DISPROVED. People asking for PROOF that his experiments failed, don't seem to understand that because he did not use any scientific methods, this is NOT POSSIBLE. Therein lies the problem.
The problem with the rice experiment is the same as the problem with the water experiment. Because Emoto does not place strict controls on his experiments, he could be contaminating them. One rice container may have not been exposed to bacteria, two may have been. For the naysayers of this "debunking", true debunking is recreating the experiment with strict controls and as a double-blind study, but having said that, how guillable are you? The obvious errors and omissions from Emoto support a written, not tested, debunking.
Quick Google search, the University's web page: Accredited By IAO, WAUC, United States of America
Membership With UNESCO & UNICEF
And there you have it, it is accredited.
Quick Google search about the university which you said wasn't accredited. On the first page of the website: Accredited By IAO, WAUC, United States of America
Membership With UNESCO & UNICEF
...and i am accredited by PSP and THC!!
Result of another quick google search ("iao wauc college accreditation"):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unrecognized_higher_education_accreditation_organizations
SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY...WHAT HELL ARE THEY DOING TO HUMANITY...? LET US NOT DEPEND ON WHAT THEY CALL SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY.....THEY THEMSELVES HAVE THEIR INDIVIDUAL MOTIVE FILLED WITH PERSONAL INTRIGUES...TAKE A LOOK BACK IN HISTORY BETWEEN PASTEUR VS. BECHAMP AND THOMAS EDISON VS. TESLA!!!! SCIENTIFIC......LET US NOT DEPEND ON WHAT THEY CALL SCIENTIFIC..... IT IS JUST A BUNCH OF IGNORANCE CLAIMING FOR TRUTH.
If you are going to go out of your way to debunk someone else's claims, then run your own experiment to prove it wrong. Or just go do something better with your time then destroy the beautiful work of a well intentioned man. Quantum Physicists are now proving that none of this may even be real. Our own existence, or what we believe it to be, cannot be proved by the top minds in our world. Get over your self. Science is proving way more esoteric things than this.
I stopped reading the posts.. Nothing I've seen would justify the blatant nonsense I see against the phenomena. It Still stands ! Why does water react as it does and what effect do we have on each other?
HI
I FIND IT INTERESTING THAT SCRIPTURE SAYS IT, CELLS HAVE MEMORY, PLANTS REACT TO WORDS SO WHY NOT WATER?
Water isn't a cell it's an element
some of the great scientists that have all the comments should do some scientific examination and not jus talk about it. science has proven that we affect plants animals and many other things by verbage, tone inflections and again I ask why not wateru. I would like to see anonomouses credentials. If one out of a 1000 was affected the hypothesis was corret even if the procedure is flawed.
Well sir after reading your views on his experiments I would rather believe him than you. He may not have conducted his experiments as you described, and this may have been intentional. The bottom line is that these experiments have been done by many qualified scientist and found to have merit as for your efforts you have not provided any clear evidence that these are wrong as by your description of crystals at the head of this page you have place the wrong words in your statement of effect of music on the crystals e.g. you stated heavy metal music when the music was classical so I give you minus 1 for you attempts.
There is one other way to look at this If he is wrong is there a better way to live that you know off.
Before any living being engages with another living being a dichotomy as a neural switch is present to either engage with agenda of "love" or "not love". Mr. Emoto's engaged the many many people with "love" and he proceeded with scientific protocol serving to propagate "love" to those he engaged. Mr. William here has attempted to engage others with gesture of "not love". He further presents an argument that serves to promote "not love" to those that he engages. I choose who, what and how to be engaged and I try always to choose "love" and I will explore further Mr. Emoto's research to better propagate "love" to those I engage in possibly a more scientific and reproducible manner. After all, I live a life of "love". Who the heck wishes a life of "no love" upon himself.
Whether Masuru Emoto has been to an accredited university or not does not affect the validity of his work. Further, claims that he is not "a proper scientist" sound to me like intellectual snobbery.
Then the point of science is to make observations and bring more evidence that will increase the probability that one hypothesis is more valid than others. But some things are so incredible given our knowledge about the world, that even with a high number of evidence the result is still doubtful. Prooving an incredible theory requires an incredible quality of evidence, and that is absolutely normal. And that does not mean that the idea will never be accepted scientifically, because scientists are not open minded enough or something like that. Pseudo scientists often use analogies to quantum physics to support their claims. In quantum physics, we say that a particle can be at one position and another at the same time, and also that the two probabilities to find the particles at two positions can also interfere with each other like two actually different particles (see young's slits). This is quite incredible and was very much in contradiction with peoples vision of the world at the time, and could sound very unrealistic, very pseudo scientific or even paranormal. And yet it was quickly accepted by many scientists, simply because solid evidence was provided. So scientists ARE able to accept incredible things when given correct evidences.
What I find incredible is that most people talking about Emoto's work do not realize how far the implications are from the current knowledge we have about the work. I often hear it cited just as one other evidence that we have to be careful about what intentions we send to others because it can harm them. And then after 2 minutes people switch to another topic, as if this was just another thing. This tells a lot about how incredible their view of the world must be. If thoughts can really affect matter, if water can really retain information about emotions, for example, that is so incredible that anybody who believes that would want to make a lot of experiments to prove it. They would want to know how much time the memory can be retained in water, what is the vector of the emotions, electromagnetic waves ? What wavelength ? Then what about trying to put different types of shields ? Why don't a shitload of people try to replicate the experiment with the same rigor (double blind etc...), how about trying to see if some things can erase the memory of water, like boiling or freezing ? All those things could help us understand what are the physical phenomena behind that and support the theory a lot. That would be extremely interesting for anybody who believes in that. If I believed in that, I would seriously stop everything I am doing and start studying that for the rest of my life. But it seems that nobody cares. One or two experiments are enough for people to prove the thing, and then nobody cares. This I find incredible. You cannot just simply show a picture of a flying saucer and expect all the world to believe in aliens like you do, as if it is a thing as common as encountering a squirrel in the forrest. Of course nobody will believe you. Of course the most probable thing they will believe is that your flying saucer is due to an error in the developpement of the film or simply that you made it up. Because that is the most probable thing. And you cannot expect all the non believers to do the experiments to disprove your claim. There are so many paranormal hypotheses around the world, people don't have time to make all the experiments to prove that to people who would not believe it anyway because they have no understanding of a how proving a scientific hypothesis works. You cannot just make a claim based on weak evidence, and then expect the whole world to spend the time doing the correct experiments for you.
Sorry, this was the first part of my comment, missing from my previous post :
Wow, the comments are quite shocking...
When given different possible explanations for a phenomenon, the explanation that we tend to believe in is the one that has the highest probability given our knowledge about how things work. If someone comes to me saying that he has met aliens, to me the highest chance is that this person has mental illness. Because we have never seen proof of aliens on earth, but we have seen many people with mental illness who talk about seeing aliens (and we have seen a lot of liers too). And it is good that it works like that, otherwise everybody would believe in absolutely everything since everybody pretends to have evidence of every possible phenomena (aliens, seeing the future, telepathy, past lives, synchronicity, science in the Coran etc..). And I am sure that most people who believe in Emoto's work do not believe in all those things at once, when there are plenty more of "evidences" of those things around us too.
I agree. We are made of water. Our brain synapses are electrical impulses. Electrcity and ionized water do what together?
WEll to all the NAYSAYERS AND DEBUNKERS , to PROVE the theory all you have to do is repeat it.. IT is NOT rocket science and not high level machinery.. All you need is water and microscopes..
So why do you NOT repeat the experiments ?? instead of complaining ??
I believe Mr. Emoto has proven a valid point..
I think the so-called scientists who 'debunked' emoto's finding are those at the same level with all those pharma-scientists who claimed to have found medicines to cure things but actually are the hands of big pharma companies. Sometimes a good simple finding hurts the ego of anyone who thinks they know better although they don't.
Emoto may not be so transparent or wholy scientific in his method, but I believe his finding still bears some beneficial truth in it.