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Post by naymissus on Apr 11, 2011 10:50:08 GMT
science doesn't hold all the answers, though, nay. i'm going to try the rice experiment. and i said thank you to the water when i turned the tap on this morning. being a bit of an animist the videos appealed to me. i thought all the different ice patterns in different types of water amazing and wondered about water that's been chemically processed. in london for instance they drink wee that's been recycled nine times over or something - how similar or different would it's memory ability/retention be? Oh I certainly agree that science does not have all the answers. But the scientific method that seeks to eliminate any spurious results is a must in this kind of thing
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Post by nickcosmosonde on Apr 11, 2011 11:47:06 GMT
Granted. But it's been replicated enough times with such rigour. Emoto's lab is as rigorous as anyone could ask for. I'm afraid the refuge that this is an artefact or simple cock-up won't wash. Any labs done a rigorous repeat of the rice experiment? Not that I'm aware of. The hurdles for such an experiment by a funded lab are obvious - obtaining the grant, getting through peer-review, the disastrous consequences on the careers of anyone involved in such pseudoscientific research should Emoto's work be replicated. Then there is the intrinsically paradoxical methodological difficulty that by its nature the thesis depends on the researcher's bias, the very thing that the scientific method demands is excluded. It's all very reminiscent of the Bienveniste story re homeopathy and the memory of water. If any scientist seriously got involved in this sort of work that would be the end of their career, that message John Maddox and Nature sent out loud and clear. I agree with the thrust of your criticism though, of course. Greater rigour and replicability is required; somehow.
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Post by rjpageuk on Apr 12, 2011 11:03:44 GMT
Scientific method doesnt preclude the existence of the researchers bias, thats fine - just as long as the trial is fair.
If you search on youtube you can also find some people who have attempted to perform the rice trick at least (only vid i watched) in a more scientific manner and have not had the same results.
I dont understand why you think there is some force AGAINST the kind of findings this experiement shows. Proving what is being implied in the experiment here through a fair trial would make you famous and rich.
It is pretty easy to set up decent conditions for the trial which would be sufficient to garner more interest if the results continued to be positive.
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Post by nickcosmosonde on Apr 23, 2011 12:45:21 GMT
I dont understand why you think there is some force AGAINST the kind of findings this experiement shows. You don't? Here's just one recent example of a scientist whose reputation, career, and income were ruined as a result of such contra-paradigmitical research: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_BenvenisteWhat is being implied in this experiment? That human beings are by their intentional states able to influence the physical properties of water? Been proven many times. Or perhaps that living organisms are able to transmit and receive and interpret such intentions? Again, been proven many times. There are some empirical discoveries which fall so far outside the accepted paradigms of science that they remain virtually ignored - or, at most, sneered at - by any of the numerous scientific fields that might tangentially be concerned with it. This is true even of discoveries that anyone would consider mainstream and ucontroversial - at least, once they have become the explicable and expected, due to a paradigm shift in accepted theory. Gregor Mendel's work on genetic inheritance, for example, or Hans Alfven's magnetohydrodynamical theories on the nature of he interplanetary plasma, magnetic storms, aurorae, etcetera. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannes_Alfv%C3%A9nExactly the same sort of professional hostility and ostracisation happened to Lynn Margulis and her endosymbiotic theory of organelle evolution - that our eukaryotic cells have incorporated primitive prokaryotic cells - heliobacteria to form our colour sensitive cells in our eyes, for example - of various sorts to produce new symbiotic functionalities. At one point she couldn't even get her papers refereed, obtain a single grant, and was booed off the stage at a major scientific conference. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_MargulisYes it would, and such studies of directly related phenomena, if not this exact experiment (there is nothing in the least original or startling about it) have been done to impeccable standards for at least 50 years, in terms of the transferrence and influence of intention, and 80 years at least to demonstrate em and magnetic communication between living cells. Anyone conducting "decent" trials of the sort you suggest would face years of hounding and accusations of fraud or incompetence at best should there be positive, publishable results. If he could attract any notice at all, of course.
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Post by principled on Apr 23, 2011 17:21:19 GMT
Nick Interesting videos. A couple of points about the transmission of information to the rice. 1) Transfer of info via vibration: this wouldn't work as each language has different sounds for the same thing (eg Thank you in English is not the same as thank you in Japanese) 2) Transmission by thought (electromagnetic waves): Interesting as this is not done on the basis of language. Nevertheless, this would imply that the rice could decode such information, or are they suggesting that rice itself thinks"?
I'm with Nay on the scientific rigour. The jars would have to be sterilised and filled in a vacuum to avoid contamination from any source.
The water crystals are also interesting. The chemical (mineral) content of water varies and as such there is no reason why the molecular bonds shouldn't be affected by this. Ditto for bombarding the water with various frequencies (music) while it freezes, I could see how this would shape the bonds as the vibration is turned into heat within the crystal structure.
However, this does not detract from the underlying idea of transmission of/ and translation of information from animate to inanimate objects. Do we know whether, for instance, we could add a string of info onto an electron ( a bit like inserting a piece of DNA to a cell)?
i'll leave that to the scientists! P
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