Tags
bad science, charlatans, emoticons, fake spirituality, frauds, gibberish, Mother Theresa, urban warriors, water
I haven’t had a rant about bad science for a little while, so I’ve decided to make this a good one. You are going to just love this. Honest, you are. It’s a beauty. The subject of this polemic is beyond the wildest imaginings of the fevered mind. I’m giving it to you as a freebie in the runup to my long delayed post about the charlatanry that is homeopathy. You’ll like that, too. It will have been worth the wait.
Let me set the scene. Dr Masaru Emoto is a Japanese scientist who claims that water’s molecular structure is affected by the ‘energy’ in thoughts and emotions. Positive, touchy feely thoughts make for positive changes; negative, naughty, coveting thy neighbour’s ox type thoughts have an adverse effect.
As you’d expect, there’s a YouTube post about this. Actually there’s quite a lot of them from persons living on the ragged edge of reality, but this is one of the best because it’s the official video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAvzsjcBtx8
Now if you watch and listen, you’ll find that in order to illustrate the changes, the revered Dr Emoto (dodgy name, that, considering his field of research) has to ‘crystallise’ the water. In grown up English, he freezes it. What the good Doctor is doing is making snowflakes. I think I told you I was fairly certain someone must have been making snowflakes in a lab, and there you go, I was right. He’s making snowflakes.
What he then does is choose to present a photograph of just one of the snowflakes made from water exposed to good or bad energy. Pretty convincing, eh? It’s not as if there may be more than one snowflake in his collection, is it? Maybe he really does use iggywiggy sample sizes. It could happen.
As a random example, let’s take the Mother Theresa snowflake. It’s up there on YouTube, don’t take my word for it. This snowflake, made from water exposed to the words ‘Mother Theresa,’ is apparently especially interesting because it has a heart in the centre. Really, it does, I’m not kidding you. A heart. You can see it on the screen. Amazing!
I do wonder though why Mother Theresa wants to create flaws in the structure of snowflakes, as the heart is a flaw in the normal structure of a snowflake. You’d think she’d be having a good rest now. She did quite a lot when she walked this Earth, and deserves a break. I’m pretty sure she’s got better things to be doing in her afterlife than support the ravings of a Japanese lunatic.
By the way, the heart shape is asymmetrical. So’s the human heart, yes, I accept that. But this looks like a ‘broken-hearted’ emoticon. You might expect the shade of Mother Theresa to like things a bit more neat and tidy. Maybe not though. It might just be me being cynical. Who knows?
The switched on urban warriors among you will have spotted the flaws in his arguments right out of the trap. He’s not photographing at a molecular level. These are macrostructures. No evidence at all that the underlying molecular structure has been altered in any way, shape, or form. As for the ‘polluted’ water notsnowflakes, we have no idea of the scale of the photos. Indeed we have no idea at all of the scale of any of them, but they must be biggish, since you can’t photograph molecules. Trust me, you can’t. You can infer their structure from X-ray diffraction crystallography, but this is a pretty high energy process that would melt the crystals anyway, even if they didn’t sublime in the high vacuum required for this technique.
So all in all this is what we scientists refer to as a right load of old socks. It would be funny were it not for so many people of easy susceptibility actually believing the old fraud.
It’s amazingly easy to fool the gullible. I’m still beavering away on my website about the health benefits of a common, nay ubiquitous substance. I’m having second thoughts about this. Because I reckon some dimwits are going to take it seriously.
Where do you come up with this stuff?
Hello 🙂
Morning. I don’t know. I just had a poke about following a post on Ryan Briggs’s site.
You’re a multi complex man.
Errmmm, are we? Thanks from all of us for the compliment.
haa tis true. the voices must be deafening
Sorry, what did you say? It’s a bit noisy this morning.
haa hush now
Arf!
😀
NRM,
But…..Urban Warriors are okay with reality so warped its ridiculous right?
RR
A fair point well made, Mark.
How’s it hangin’ at your end?
I’m still chipping away at the day job, but inverting reality and spanking its ass in my off time 🙂
A laudable aim in life, my boy.
Reblogged this on The Blogspaper.
Interesting stuff.
As one with an open mind I am open to suggestion…so I will experiment!
Dripping tap of (at least) two months duration. Whenever I visit bathroom to wash hands (and/or secretly sip gin (cunningly hidden amongst my collection of used tissues – don’t ask!)) I shall talk lovingly to dripping water and ask it not to do so (drip).
Will report outcome say, end of month?
Think: if water does have the faculty of memory, golly-gosh it is amazing, must be multilingual and everything! Wonder if it thinks? It must think – or it wouldn’t have memory – or would it? Would its memory be instinctive, innate…
Excuse me – must dash. Feeling pretty guilty about the water in the toilet bowl – must go and apologise…
Anna :o]
That last gag had me snorting with laughter. Well done.
😀
Is he selling the “good” water? (Sorry, I don’t have time to watch the video — I have to get ready to deal with the lunatics I’ll be waiting on today — probably some of them armed with microscopes — ya know, so that they can discern the good ice cubes from the bad ones — because these are the nutjobs that I, by and large, come into contact with on a daily basis.)
I’ve written a playlet for a competition. The basic premise is what a waiter is thinking as opposed to what he’s saying. I think it’s pretty funny
OMG… I’m sure it is. You should be inside of my head sometimes… the bad thing about me is that once in a while I actually DO say what I’m thinking. Luckily I’m a pretty valued employee, LOL!
I recently told this kid to “take human bites” — so grossed out was I by his table manners. His parents were, let’s just say, not amused. I was stunned by my own behavior — stunned. So, I apologized and brought him some extra napkins. They never asked to see a manager. I suppose they were, and rightly so, embarrassed by Junior’s behavior because, let’s face it, his table manners (or lack thereof) are a direct reflection on their parenting skills.
I was appalled and, as a result, let the private dialogue slip out. Oh, well.
‘Take human bites…’ Absolutely priceless. I nearly had a cow when I read that. As it was I had to go outside to get some air into my lungs. Very very funny.
don’t think I am smart enough for this blog post
Neither is Emoto Masaru. But I don’t believe you. You are plenty smart enough.
😀
only sometimes, other times–not so much….
Welcome to the human race. I got disqualified for shoving
all you have to say, is “based on a study” and idiots will believe it. I didn’t go check it out, so as to NOT support looking at his video….but a ‘right load of old socks’ is great, might have to borrow that line… 🙂
Please feel free to use this line. I think it’s very expressive.
😀
Okay, homoeopathy, you got me, I am a sceptic, but it works for me. I had never heard of it until five years ago, but when the NHS GP is stumped, I don’t presume I have to suffer.
Of course, I don’t know why homoeopathy works for me, and I don’t really need to know – let’s face it, how many of us know what is or isn’t in the conventional medicine some of us take every day? But if I get a good night’s sleep tonight because my ear doesn’t itch, that sounds good to me 🙂
You are just going to LOVE my homeopathy post. You will just love it…
😀
As it happens I do know what’s in most conventional pharmaceuticals. I worked in the industry for nigh on 30 years.
Ha ha – I shudder to think. My ear is still not itching. Let’s hear it for Urtica !!