Masuru Emoto wins Randis million?

[PIT2]

Here is a story about Masuru Emoto (the water guy from what the bleep) i found on a blog. First of all, here are some words by Randi the million dollar person:

Dr. Emoto might very well believe that he's doing science. But he's not. He does no double-blind procedures, for one thing, which dooms these amateur efforts, right from the beginning. If he were to be blind to which words were being used to influence the water crystals, his search through the results looking for confirmation, would be inconclusive. I'll risk the JREF million-dollar prize on that statement. If Dr. Emoto wants to win the prize, let him agree to perform his tests in a double-blind fashion, and I predict he'll get fuzzy results that prove nothing.

http://amethodnotaposition.blogspot.com/2006/10/time-for-randi-to-pay-up.html

Now such a double blind test has been performed by Dean Radin:

DOUBLE-BLIND TEST OF THE EFFECTS OF DISTANT INTENTION ON WATER CRYSTAL FORMATION

The hypothesis that water “treated” with intention can affect ice crystals formed from that water was pilot tested under double-blind conditions. A group of approximately 2,000 people in Tokyo focused positive intentions towards water samples located inside an electromagnetically shielded room in California. That group was unaware of similar water samples set aside in a different location as controls. Ice crystals formed from both sets of water samples were blindly identified and photographed by an analyst, and the resulting images were blindly assessed for aesthetic appeal by 100 independent judges. Results indicated that crystals from the treated water were given higher scores for aesthetic appeal than those from the control water (p = 0.001, one-tailed), lending support to the hypothesis.

Citation: Radin, D. I., Hayssen, G., Emoto, M., & Kizu, T. (2006). Explore, September/October 2006, Vol. 2, No. 5.

A triple-blind replication of this effect is presently underway.

http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2006/10/effects-of-distant-intention-on-water.html
http://amethodnotaposition.blogspot.com/2006/10/double-blind-experimental-validation-of.html

A graph of the results: http://www.pbase.com/sdaconsulting/image/68488129/original.jpg

Perhaps there really is something to Emoto's claims?

 

[SGT]

Radin is of course eligible for the prize. But he must apply for the prize and accept to be tested under controlled conditions by an independent jury.
The rules of the test must be agreed upon by the applyant and by the jury.

 

[Evo]

This is absolute nonsense. Radin is considered a crackpot, just read about him. It's obvious that the positive intentions bounced off the shielded room and hit the "control" water in error.

 

[SGT]

I'm using my psychic powers to predict that neither Emoto nor Radin will dare to apply for the million dollars.

 

[Gokul43201]

Doesn't this experiment merely "prove" that the positive thoughts of the 2000 people affected the judgements of the 100 judges? Were the judges wearing tin-foil hats?

 

[K.J.Healey]

How many photos did the analyst take from each sample? Was the sample size 1 photo from each? or hundreds, thousands? Doesnt this rocess pretty much put everything at the discretion of the person taking images of the crystal samples. I am also assuming that more than one crystal type forms in each sample, due to the fairly randomness of dendritic growth, right?

 

[PIT2]

How many photos did the analyst take from each sample? Was the sample size 1 photo from each? or hundreds, thousands? Doesnt this rocess pretty much put everything at the discretion of the person taking images of the crystal samples. I am also assuming that more than one crystal type forms in each sample, due to the fairly randomness of dendritic growth, right?

Im afraid u will have to pay to get those questions answersed.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Not to defend Radin as I know nothing about this beyond what is posted:

Perceived beauty - aesthetic appeal - can be a measure of symmetry. This is largely what we "measure" when we judge people's looks. Also, the results are mostly reproducible in that there is a clear preference for who we consider to be beautiful.

 

[Alkatran]

Important point: how did they calculate the p value?

For example, assume a single picture was taken of each sample and the p value was calculated assuming judge choices were independent. Then, chances are, one picture actually will be 'prettier', and the judges choices would reflect this. So their choices would tend to be similar, and the analysis would result in an artificially low p value.

In other words, the judges should be deciding which pictures are better than others, and then you calculate the p-values based on the picture ratings. The number of judges should not affect that calculation in any significant way.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I'm wondering about other factors that might contribute to the aesthetic appeal of frozen water. Does shielding it from the Earth's magnetic field automatically produce a better looking freeze? Does speed of freezing make a difference? Is one sample near a highway or surface street where it was subjected to irregular vibrations during freezing? In general, just what known factors contribute to the shape of water crystals? Has this been studied?