Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Stop to Think 1

EoR has been reading the New York Times bestseller (and, as all his readers know, this is a pretty telling confirmation of any book's veracity) The Hidden Messages in Water by Japanese author Masaru Emoto.

A good summary of Emoto-san's ideas is at James Randi's site. Basically, Emoto-san believes water can be affected by thoughts. A bit like the magical homeopaths, but even more way out.

As proof of its scientific validity, there's even a link to it through Science Daily. Sadly.

The Introduction makes it clear that this book has very little to do with science, and is primarily about messianic cults:

As you begin reading this book, I'd like to ask you to evaluate your life. More specifically, I'd like you to ask yourself if you are happy. [...] In fact, I have found the answer, and it is just this: The average human body is 70 percent water. [...] So how can people live happy and healthy lives? The answer is to purify the water that makes up 70 percent of your body. Water in a river remains pure because it is moving. When water becomes trapped, it dies. [...] So just what is water? Your first answer might be that it is a life force.

Funny - that wasn't EoR's first answer. EoR will skip over the amazing world of homeopathy, except to point out Emoto-san's recommendation for lead poisoning:

symptoms can be alleviated by drinking water with the minutest amount of lead in it - an amound ranging in 1 part in 10¹² (one trillion) to 1 part in 10⁴⁰⁰!

That exclamation part is Emoto-san's, not EoR's. EoR would have added a few more. By an amazing leap (with no scientific evidence, no scientific theory, no scientific hypothesis, not even a fantasy hypothesis) of illogicality, four paragraphs later we are told

So water has the ability to copy and memorize information. [...] To understand water is to understand the cosmos, the marvels of nature, and life itself.

Jacques Benveniste gets as mention as supporting these claims (though, apparently,

The hypothesis has remained buried and forgotten ever since.

Hardly. Every homeopath who is threatened by Evidence calls on Benveniste's name in his hour of need.

In line with Emoto-san's religious fervour, EoR proposes formalising the Homeopathic Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Hahnemann the Creator, Benveniste the Holy Spirit, and Emoto the Saviour and Prophet.

Emoto-san then relates his Road to Damascus tale, of struggling to photograph ice crystals (which, presumably, would be news to the photographer of The Snowflake), until, one day,

the researcher - who was as caught up in the project as I - said something completely out of left field: "Let's see what happens when we expose the water to music."

If EoR was 'the researcher' he'd be pretty pissed off that Emoto-san couldn't even be bothered mentioning his name.

Well, amazingly enough, classical music produced classically beautiful crystals. But heavy metal music produced ugly and malformed crystals. Then Emoto-san wanted to see what happened when words written on paper were attached to the water bottles (as you would).

Water exposed to "Thank you" formed beautiful hexagonal crystals, but water exposed to the word "Fool" produced crystals similar to the water exposed to heavy-metal music, malformed and fragmented.

Emoto-san concludes his introduction, in his clear, dispassionate and reasoned manner,

And I have found the most beautiful crystal of all - the one created by "love and gratitude." This is supposedly what all the world's religions are founded on, and if that were true, there would be no need for laws.

Ah, yes, "if that were true"...

Emoto-san has just run the 3rd Hado Instructor School in Hawaii (five days - $US3,300) where participants were enlightened by all sorts of wackiness, such as pyramid power, vibrational medicine, the Hado measuring device (Emoto-san's own black box of magic energy detectors), numerology, Zen Buddhism, homeopathy and on and on.