Mind Over Matter and Ice Cubes

Llamarama

A friend of mine told me a while ago about this article he read ~50 years ago about some prisoners being blindfolded, told they were going to be cut with a razor, and having an ice cube rubbed on them. Apparently it felt like a razor and because of "mind over matter" the prisoners actually got cut and started bleeding. I've been trying to figure out if this has any basis in an actual article or if my friend is just remembering something badly. Has anybody else heard of this or know where this legend came from? I'm usually pretty good at finding things on the internet, but none of my searches turn up anything, and it doesn't help that a Google search of 'mind over matter + ice' turns up 10 pages of lyrics for Ice-T's song "Mind Over Matter." Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ivan Seeking

I too have heard and read such claims. In particular, I have even seen psychologists claim the mind over matter business as the "scientific explanation" for alleged cases of stigmata, which in itself qualifies as crackpottery. If this were true, it would be as amazing as the stigmata claim.

As a sideline to this, we have the placebo effect, which we know to be real.

bassplayer142

I would believe that they would feel the pain and experience the feeling of being cut. But if the mind can indeed cut the body itself it would have to have a means to. What I'm getting at is that there is no organ or tissue under the skin that could exert a force to cut the skin. Either that or we don't know much about the human body...

LogicalTime

I highly doubt this... it would be a big thing if it were demonstrable. People would put that on youtube in under 9 nanoseconds.

Screenshot or it didn't happen... lol

Denton

Yeah as bassplayer said im sure they could've misinterpreted the signals as the brain deals with that however to the fact of actually causing wounds.. the brain does not have a link to EVERY single cell therefore cannot control all the cells in such a way that could cause it to cut.

HallsofIvy

If I stare at an ice cube long enough, I can make it melt! A clear case of "mind over matter".

giann_tee

Interesting question perhaps more so because I can not remember answer that I got, for example, on Discovery channel. I think that people can get a rash from immune system and display some reactions.

Btw, isn't it amazing that Chinese man called "magnetic man" who can attract metals and not by magnetic force? Saw it several times on Discovery. My guess is something like static electricity.

:-)

(love magneto)

Ivan Seeking

Or, perhaps the effect results from boloney?

Ivan Seeking

I will make a wild leap of faith that when you do this, the ambient temp is above freezing.

giann_tee

You know in this notification email for new replies it says "There may also be other replies," but it would be humanly impossible to talk about the impossible. I believe in magnetic man.

Hurkyl

How deliciously ironic -- your statement disproves itself!

Ivan Seeking

Why; because you saw it on TV?

Proton Soup

the trick is to embed a magnet under the skin.


as for the ice cutting trick... i call b.s. it's about as useful a piece of data as reading anecdotes like this:

maybe next someone would like to debunk the "experiments" shown every week or so an episode of the "Sci-Fi" channel's "Ghost Hunters"

Ivan Seeking

I seriously doubt it.

They claim to collect various forms of evidence in the form of audio, video, temperature measurements, etc. The most obvious explanation is that all of the interesting evidence is faked. Of course we don't know that to be true.

Note the distinction here: Magneto man, or whatever his name is, could perform in front a university staff any day he chooses. Since this feat of magic is allegedly reproducible on demand, the fact that we haven't seen a scientific paper published is all but proof that it's a hoax.

Proton Soup

it's been done

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mods/news/2006/06/71087