Experiment 5: Alleged unusual behavior of water

Some time ago I've stumbled upon the work of a scientist named Masaru Emoto (sorry for the wikipedia link). He claims to have observed/discovered unusual behavior of water. The following video clip, taken from the movie What The Bleep Do We Know, provides an adequate demonstration:

If his claims are true, then we have discovered another anomaly of water. Well to be honest, if water can change it's density in an anomalous fashion and we have jet to explain why, then I see no reason why we shouldn't give the kind of behavior seen in the above video a scientific chance?

On the other hand, in all fairness and by the laws of critical thinking, Masaru Emoto's claims seem to be preposterous. The methodology used in his experiments seems to be biased. Ever heard of double-blind experiments? That is why a scientist named Kristopher Setchfield put Emoto's claims to the test. Here is a quote from his concluding paragraph:

"After the lengthy review of Emoto’s research methods and results, I have come to believe that Dr. Emoto is offering pseudoscience to the masses in the guise of defensible research."

If you would like to read the whole paper, here is the link.

Another internet site owner made an offer to Emoto:

"I will pay Dr. Masaru Emoto $10,000.00 if he can identify, in a double-blind study, what someone's mood was when they were meditating over vials of water."

As far as I know, the challenge hasn't been accepted.

In conclusion, I've laid out some basic claims and their respectful skeptics. If there is any chance that water can respond to intent and other mental stimuli, we have an obligation as scientist to "figure it out". On the other hand, if there is irrefutable proof this "water anomaly" is a hoax, then the subject should be treated as such.

I'm hoping this post will start a comments debate. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Experiment 4: Device for healing bacterial and viral diseases

Have a look at this video. It is a lecture made by doctor Robert (aka Bob) Beck.



In that video, doctor Beck proposes an astonishing claim: one can heal himself of all bacterial and viral diseases by using a simple electronic device. That claim begs for confirmation. If such a device works as described, it would mean an end to all known pathogenic diseases. Since I don't have access to a bio-lab, microscopes, blood samples and similar, here is a schematic of the device and the necessary parts list. Click on an image to enlarge it, then right click to save it.

Maybe someone will do the research and share the findings with the world. I don't mean to startle anyone, but we are looking at a potential cure for AIDS!!! If it wasn't considered morbid, I would propose testing these devices on patients dying from AIDS. How to test such a device in a more ethical way? One could for example take infested blood, then "zap" it, then observe the changes. But watch out for the pharmaceutical companies ;)

As always, your comments and/or questions are most welcome.

Experiment 3: Accelerated plant growth

This is a thought experiment. It is designed to question the possibility of accelerated plant growth. There are two distinct approaches; growing them bigger and growing them faster. But first, a little history reminder: there was a time in our Earth's development when plant dominated its entire surface. They grew in huge numbers and sizes. That period is called Carboniferous. For example the Carboniferous lycophytes of the order Lepidodendrales, were huge trees with trunks 30 meters high and up to 1.5 meters in diameter. Most of our coal supplies were formed in this period.

Those facts gave me an idea. Maybe we could examine and replicate the conditions in which the plants obviously thrived. After some research, I came up with the following list of factors that determine plant height and speed of growth:

1. the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air
2. the air pressure
3. the qualities of light (color and intensity)
4. the qualities of plant nutrients (they do intake them, via their roots)
5. the qualities of the medium in which the plant grows (ground, water, air)

If a lab was made with the purpose of testing the influence of those factors on plant growth, I'm certain they would come up with some excellent and surprising results. The downside is, the entire experiment would take a lot of time and work. Let's put that into perspective.

Imagine you had 10 different plant species, 10 samples of each species. That's 100 plants. If you were to measure 10 different levels of each of the 5 main growth factors (listed above) on those 100 plants, that would add up to 10000000 (10 million) different experiments. And this is barely scratching the surface.

Hope you found this informative. I'm looking forward to your comments.