Effects of distant intention on water crystals

Some people, when faced with claims like Dr. Emoto's "intention affects the formation of water cystals," immediately dismiss it as nonsense. Others uncritically accept the claim because it sounds nice. My first reaction is to try to replicate the claim to see it for myself. I conducted such a test with Dr. Emoto, where he and his staff were kept blind as to which bottles of water had been treated. The paper reporting the experiment has just come out. Here's the abstract:

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.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Fascinating abstract. I admit being very skeptical of Dr. Emoto's claims when first reading them. But I agree with you that science is about investigating unusual claims, not scoffing at them.

Any idea if or when this paper will be available for people who do not subscribe to Explore Journal?
Dean Radin said…
Some past articles the journal provides for free on their website. I'm not sure how they decide which ones go into that category. If you'd like an electronic reprint in the meantime, then send me an email request: dean at noetic dot org
Anonymous said…
Thanks very much Dean.

I've just published a writeup on this paper for AMNAP. Fascinating experimental confirmation of Emoto's basic claims and I look forward to your triple-blind replication study as well.

P.S. The Blogger Beta is well worth switching to, for the keyword labels and vast performance improvements, as well as a host of other new features.
Anonymous said…
This sounds like a possible winner of the James Randi one million dollar prize to me !!
Why not give it a try Dr. Emoto
davidfkane said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Dean Radin said…
David said ...

Hi Dean,

It is worth noting that Dr. Emoto's paper could be made accessible without delay, if he had an institutional repository.

Research of this sort is of interest not just to scientists, but to the wider community. If ordinary people do not have access to the primary sources like this paper, then the skeptics can win with spin.

If you look at this website:
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
you can see that papers from 'Explore', can actually be made publicly accessible, subject to minor conditions -
* Must be published on author's personal or author's institution's server
* Published source must be acknowledged (Elsevier's 'Explore' journal, in this case)
* Must link to journal home page
* Publisher's version/PDF cannot be used
* Articles in some journals can be made Open Access on payment of additional charge

Best, David.
Nordattack said…
Dean,
Could you tell me a little more about how the changes in water's hydrogen bonds caused by healing intention is significant? There are blessed springs like Lourdes that are known for their healing water. Does its water and the intention treated water display the same changes in the hydrogen bonds?
Are these changes in the hydrogen bonds what cause the unique ice crystal formations?
Finally there are certain devices that employee a matrix of crystals, copper and epoxy that are supposed to produce Orgone energy and are used to treat water. Do devices like this produce the same changes in water as intention?
Dean Radin said…
The current study didn't look into these interesting questions. A few earlier experiments referenced in this paper did address possible changes in hydrogen bonds, and they were found to differ between "healing" and control water. Exactly why this occurs is unknown.

Please keep in mind that there is hardly any funding available for this line of research. So unfortunately all of the very interesting questions about molecular bonding, effects in other materials, etc., that immediately come to mind, cannot be systematically pursued.

This is a general problem with frontier research. Most of it tends to focus on proof-oriented demonstrations rather than methodical understanding, because when you are faced with an anomaly the first thing everyone wants (including the investigators) is evidence that there's something genuine going on. If you find something interesting, then you need to replicate it and get others to replicate it as well. With little to no funding, this ordinary colleagial process of scientific confirmation is stalled, because no one has funding to do the replications.

This creates a Catch 22: Conventional sources of funding want solid evidence that the anomaly is genuine before they'll provide funds. But you can't produce that evidence without funding. So progress is slow.
Anonymous said…
Thanks for the research on water, Dean. This is my passion. It is difficult to "see" what is really going on with specialty waters that have been enhanced.

We've been doing some research on "The Water". This is a specialty water that has been enhanced with a geometric/virtual photon laser, and other equipment. There are other thnigs being done to enhance it as well, including "Geometric Light Language".

Some of the recent tests show that The Water, when compared to other specialty waters, out-performed them all. It penetrated plant cells in 10 seconds (Florida research), and what took the others 10-15 days to do, it penetrated dehydrated, spliced beef and poultry samples in 10 minutes (Colorado research).

Presently, I am working on a project that includes sound and Vogel Cut Crystal in a specially designed apparatus. Marcel Vogel did some amazing things with quartz, and he knew the correlations between water and quartz bonding angles. This research is called the Freewaves Project.
Odiseo said…
Dear Dr. Dean,
Do you have any information on the effects of intention over human DNA? Are you familiar with the experiments of Dr. Pjotr Garjajev and Dr. Vladimir Poponin on DNA? As I am sure you realize, the implications of these kind of experiments on healing and evolution are immense. Any information
Congratulations and Best regards,
Ulysses Castillo
http://www.SpiritAndScience.org/
Anonymous said…
Dear Dr. Radin,

Hi, I am from Japan.
I have read your paper published in Explore. However, I am a bit disappointed because none of the water crystal photographs was presented in the paper. The aesthetic beauty of the crystals was scored on a scale from zero to six (zero meant “not beautiful” and six meant “beautiful”). However, even the average score of the treated sample is only about 2.9 (less than 3!). None of the crystals scored more than 4.5!! What does this mean? Does it mean that the crystals were overall not very beautiful?
Dean Radin said…
Yes, it means the majority of the crystal images were not considered to be beautiful.
Anonymous said…
Dear Dr. Radin,

That's interesting.
I guess many people considered the crystal photos in Mr. Emoto's book treated with "good words" to be beautiful. (That’s why the book became so popular, right?)
If the treated crystals in the experiment were not as beautiful as the ones in Mr. Emoto's book, what do you think was the problem?
1. The distance between Tokyo and Calfornia?
2. The bottled water used in the experiment?
3. Some human error?
4. Something else?
(If the water was the problem, I guess it was not a good advertisement for Fiji Water…)

I have one more minor question.
It is written in the paper that 2000 people gathered for the prayer.
From the date of experiment (16, Nov. 2005), I guess this gathering was held in Bunkyo Civic Hall in Tokyo. From the website of this hall, I found out that they have only 1802 seats. Were 200 people standing in the hall or were they in a different room? Or 1800 was round off to be 2000?

I will be greatful for your reply.
(Sorry for my broken English.)
Dean Radin said…
NagaP said... If the treated crystals in the experiment were not as beautiful as the ones in Mr. Emoto's book, what do you think was the problem?

My guess is that the pictures in Mr. Emoto's books were selected from a larger population of available pictures. Based on similar experiments by other investigators, we know that the effects of intention on physical systems tend to be quite weak. The statistical results observed in this experiment are in alignment with previously reported effects. The results reported in Mr. Emoto's books are presented more in (my interpretation) artistic terms, without the types of details normally expected in scientific or technical reports.

It is also conceivable that distance, type of water used, and the nature of the intentions applied made a difference.

From the date of experiment (16, Nov. 2005), I guess this gathering was held in Bunkyo Civic Hall in Tokyo. From the website of this hall, I found out that they have only 1802 seats. Were 200 people standing in the hall or were they in a different room? Or 1800 was round off to be 2000?

I don't know. I wasn't present at that meeting, but was told afterwards that there were 2000 people. So the figure cited was either a round-up or there were 200 additional people in attendance.
Timonardo said…
To "anonymous" who suggested this to James Randi's prize test:

If Emoto's work is honest and the results truly portray the spiritual effect, then we have a spectacular tool at our disposal.

I say never put it to Randi's test, because even genuine miracles won't be able to pass it!

See my blog for more info at http://esotericobservatory.blogspot.com/2007/02/james-randis-teaching.html

God bless All!
Armando Salle said…
I am very interested in trying to replicate the Emoto's water crystal photographies.

Unfortunately I could not found any accurate description of equipment and method. I just know that he has a big freezer to freeze the water, that he works in a room at -5 degrees Celcius, and that he uses an optical microscope X 500.

Doesn't anybody have some additional information? What kind of microscope does he use? What kind of illumination does he use? Epi-illumination? I've asked to hado.com but I didn't receive any answer.

Any information is welcome!

Thanks
James DeMeo said…
Have you any experience in water spectroscopy with such intention-influenced water samples? At my laboratory we are able to impart an increased UV absorption in water samples by charging up inside a strong Wilhelm Reich orgone accumulator, and without application of any active intentional work. The range is between 240-280 nm. Preliminary work on this is found here:
http://www.waterjournal.org/volume-3/demeo
Abstract on additional work here:
http://www.watercon.org/water_2011/abstracts.html

Thanks,
James DeMeo
Dean Radin said…
> Have you any experience in water spectroscopy ...

No. I'd like to but constraints of time and money ...
Bridget said…
Hi there - does anybody know the name and/or location of a lab which does the type of crystal formation tests that Emoto pioneered? I would like to test different alternative medicine products of mine. Thanks, in anticipation!
Dean Radin said…
I am not aware of anyone else doing this sort of test, but I also haven't been tracking this work very closely. The method in principle is simple, but to do it correctly (to do practically any experiment correctly) takes skill, time, and money.

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