MadSci Network: Other
Query:

Re: water crystillisation affected by kind words

Date: Tue Apr 8 19:40:38 2003
Posted By: John Christie, Faculty, School of Chemistry, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia
Area of science: Other
ID: 1049815570.Ot
Message:

I could not trace the book or pamphlet title you refer to anywhere on the web (it is most unusual not to find even a single reference)!

Your question raises some interesting issues about science and the scientific method.

Part of it is to do with testing and seeing if something works. But that is only one part of how science works, and what it is about. Science is an attempt to learn about the natural world around us, and how it works. It is, in many ways, a bit like putting together a large jigsaw puzzle. A scientist does NOT just pick any old hypothesis to test -- it has to be something that has a chance of fitting in with what we already know about related areas. Every new discovery is like fitting in a piece that matches up with the picture on the other pieces nearby. It is just totally implausible that speaking kind words to water could make a difference to physical processes like crystallization.

-- water has no mechanism for hearing (though it can transmit and sustain vibrations).
-- water has no brain with which to decode and understand the meaning of anything that is said in its presence.

That is the basic reason why scientists do not take ideas like this very seriously.

Let us suppose, just for a moment, that we were going to take this claim seriously. What would we have to do to test it?
-- We could not go on the author's say so that he has observed this, and it has been repeated in many countries around the world. We would look for references (details of who else has said it, and where it is written down, and exactly how they tested it). We would check that these writings had been "peer reviewed". That is, that before it was published, some other scientists had read through the detail of what each person claimed to have done, and how s/he had set up the experiments, and had certified that proper experimental procedures had been followed, and that reasonable conclusions had been drawn.
--We would then look at the experiments themselves. There are several important issues.
1. Double blind: This does not apply to all scientific experiments, but it does apply to this one, because part of what is being tested involves a subjective judgement. Somebody has to decide which set of crystals is clearer, or more perfectly formed, or "better" in some other way. There are well-established rules that apply in these sorts of cases:
a.) the person making the crystals must be a different person to the person making the judgement of their quality
b.) neither of these persons should have any way of knowing which crystals were the experimental group that were spoken nicely to, and which were the control group that were not.

2. Control: The experiments would have to involve comparing crystals that were spoken nicely to with crystals that were not. But there are many different possibilities to test. With the control group, do we
a.) keep them in strict silence?
b.) subject them to normal lab background noises?
c.) say harsh things to them in harsh tones?
d.) say harsh things to them in soothing tones?
e.) say nonsense syllables to them in soothing tones?

3. Investigation of mechanism: We can not proceed anywhere with an hypothesis like this unless we have at least a vague notion of mechanism, that is of HOW and WHY saying soothing things might be making a difference. We would need to try things like
a) saying nice things, but soundproofing the crystal growth vessel
b) saying nice things in different languages

4. Looking for related effects: If we are going to have a science where speaking nicely to a flask of water produces nicer crystals, we ought to be able to produce prettier snowflakes by broadcasting nice things over loudspeakers into a snowstorm (and this is just one example). If this does not work, then there is something fishy about the first effect, because it just cannot fit in. It is not a part of the same jigsaw!


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