Masaru Emoto
October 31st, 2006
Masaru Emoto is a Japanese pseudoscientist who claims that by directing positive or negative thoughts at water we can affect the shape of the crystals that form when it is frozen. As astonishingly untrue as this is, Emoto boasts a significant following, especially as he was featured in the hit crackpot film “What the Bleep Do We Know!?”. Emoto hasn’t submitted a single paper to a peer-reviewed journal, but he has published several volumes of a book containing pictures of his ice crystals next to their “words of intent”.Emoto also shares a great deal in common with TV copromancer Gillian McKeith, as he:
- holds a degree in International Relations
- has a PhD in alternative medicine from an unaccredited university
- pretends to be a scientist
- is a crackpot
Like many pseudoscientists, Emoto is an astute businessman and holds exclusive rights to market in Japan a device called the Bio Cellular Analyzer. He renamed it the Magnetic Resonance Analyzer, though I suspect it doesn’t employ Magnetic Resonance or analyse anything. Emoto also talks a lot about something called Hado Theory, which involves water and crystals and PayPal.
Emoto’s methods are to attach stickers with words such as “love” or “hate” to beakers of water, freeze them, and photograph the resultant ice crystals. Positive words, music or thoughts are expected to create ice crystals that are aesthetically pleasing. The most important part of this process is to ensure the technician looks long enough to find a crystal that will correspond to the tag. A double blind test could easily remove bias and prove the existence of this phenomenon. It would involve the technician photographing crystals without being told whether the samples were positively or negatively “charged”. To date, Emoto has not attempted a double-blind trial.
When questioned, Emoto responded that he didn’t “understand this double-blind too much”.
Entry Filed under: Bad Scientists
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14 Comments
1. Jacob | September 12th, 2008 at 6:05 am
So, why the real scientints don’t try to replicate the experience? As far as I saw, there’s no proof that’s the experiment on water is false, either.
2. Frank the SciencePunk | September 12th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
@ 1. Jacob
Because it’s not the job of scientists to go around debunking every stupid fakery that comes up. They have better things to do, like you know, finding a cure for cancer and building interplanetary rockets and stuff.
Science is about proving your own ideas, not coming up with an idea and insisting it is true until someone disproves it.
3. slunkis | December 1st, 2008 at 10:45 am
> finding a cure for cancer
Like any of them has found it.
So Emoto came up with his own idea and proved it. Russian and many other scientists confirmed it. So — where’s the fakery?
4. kris | March 4th, 2009 at 2:39 am
Dude…. cancer has made huge leaps in our world. They are so close to puttting it together, the therapies/techniques are so far beyond the likes of this douche!
5. syzion | March 15th, 2009 at 12:47 am
Not to be a jerk or defend this guy, but it is actually the job of scientists to debunk false claims.
It’s called Peer Review.
6. Frank the SciencePunk | March 15th, 2009 at 1:52 am
@5. syzion
I see where you’re coming from, but peer review isn’t a tool for debunking false claims, it’s a quality control process for ensuring research is valid, significant and original.
Fraud, for example, isn’t normally detected by the peer review process, because of the way peer review is set up.
In reality, debunking with false claims is down to Trading Standards and the Advertising Standards Agency.
7. syzion | April 28th, 2009 at 3:42 am
Actually Frank, that is the deal with peer review (at least how it’s SUPPOSED to work): if a referee disagrees with the contents other scientists vigorously go over the findings and either accept or challenge them.
You are, sad to say, 100% right though that peer review as we have it now is a FRAKKING JOKE, and is little better than making sure the PRESENTATION is polished, without checking the actual DATA. Whereas supposedly educated critics have taken to the intellectual equivalent of “NUH UH!”
That scientists are little better than rubber stamps for each other’s careers or whiney name-callers is, to me at least, a bigger problem than any one whackjob. THIS GUY may be an obvious crackpot (in my opinion anyway–without peer review to go over the “unwarranted claims, unacceptable interpretations, and personal views” I have no actual proof and I am thus being a bit of a hypocrite here), but how many more are just getting rubber-stamped without anyone seeing?
8. Noah Lieske | May 3rd, 2009 at 11:49 pm
you cant replicate an experiment if you don’t know every detail of the experiment.. hence the reason for not publishing papers in sufficient detail.
Noah Lieske
9. Person | May 29th, 2009 at 12:59 am
People have redone the experiments and shown that they do not work, but crackpots believe whatever they want to believe and they will always find a way out of the arguments that people with brains that function properly put forward against such stupid claims. Personally, I worship the flying spaghetti monster I can *prove* he exists and everything.
10. Person | May 29th, 2009 at 1:02 am
Also
‘So Emoto came up with his own idea and proved it. Russian and many other scientists confirmed it. So — where’s the fakery?’
Sorry, but other than military advancements Russian science is an actual joke. I’ve watched Russian ‘documentaries’ on various ’scientific’ discoveries and I cannot believe that people on this earth are naive enough to be taken in by this rubbish.
11. Eugthehuge | June 13th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Dr. Emotos experiments have never been replicated. He would not even share enough information as to the techniques he uses to get his (fake) water crystal pics. When something looks like bullshit, smellls like bullshit and tastes like bullshit, most likely it is bullshit.
12. Doesnt matter | November 2nd, 2009 at 1:16 am
Just like Emoto, I see absolutely no sources cited or credible information used to support claims such as “…is a crackpot.”
Umm, talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Where’s the objectivity? Isn’t this supposed to be a scientific site?
Piss poor writing, regardless of the validity of Emoto’s claims.
13. Ed | January 23rd, 2010 at 12:21 pm
@ Slunkis “> finding a cure for cancer
Like any of them has found it. ”
Veryily, thou dost douche. I don’t need to detail the advances in radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery that cure thousands every year of cancer, nor the increased understanding of our DNA that shows us why we get cancer in the first place.
Nuts like this nutbag think that because we are made of living water, we can communicate with that water to heal us. I knew one person who died of curable cancer because she swallowed this sort of bunk – that’s her fault, not theirs, but these ideas are dangerous and plain wrong.
This chump has not proved his ideas: submitting one non-scientific article to an alternative health journal is proof that his work is nothing more than pretty pictures: if it was real, he’d have won a nobel prize by now.
14. The house healer «&hellip | April 26th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
[...] [1] I’m not sure what the “natural radiation” that is referred to is, however please read this article for the facts about EM pollution. http://www.skepdic.com/emf.html [2]There has never been any proof issued to support the idea of a mystical energy given off by spirits/ghosts, the type which would need to exist for geopsychic stress to exist.[3] http://www.sciencepunk.com/2006/10/masaru-emoto/ [...]
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