Literate Molecules

May 12th, 2005 by Ben Goldacre in channel 4, quantum physics, telegraph, water | 7 Comments »

Literate molecules

Ben Goldacre
Thursday May 12, 2005
The Guardian

• Nobody is inviting me to any premieres for the US hit docudrama What the Bleep Do We Know!? — in cinemas next week — so all I know about it is the Telegraph magazine article that reader Ken Joy sent me. The film features the work of Dr Masaru Emoto, who, the article reports, has a PhD from the Open International University; it doesn’t mention that Bad Science bullied Channel 4’s Dr Bannock into rescinding a similar doctorate.
• The article, by “health and beauty writer” Kathy Phillips, credulously reports how Emoto photographed molecules of water from the Fujiwara dam in Japan through a microscope. A pretty strong microscope to photograph molecules, you might think. Then he had the water blessed: “When photographed, the water molecule had transformed into a beautiful snowflake shape.” Nice. “[Jars of] water photographed after positive words such as ‘love’ and ‘thank you’ was [sic] taped to them overnight produced beautiful patterns,” writes Phillips. “Those with words like ‘you make me sick’, ‘war’ or ‘hate’ attached, resulted in fractured, wild shapes.”

• The point of all this, in the film, is that the troubled lead character covers herself in hearts and lies in the bath, because she is made of water, and this affects her in a similar way and makes her feel better. But to me this tells a deeper story about alternative therapies: about intellectual laziness, and how self-centred we can be. After all, how indulgent do we have to be, to put humans at the centre of the universe, and say that if we bless water, then by our human aesthetics its shapes will become “more beautiful”, that water will read whatever language we write. Perhaps, that’s what still most unsettles people about science, that we are no longer at the centre of the universe.

• But more than that, how sad to let the field of mind-body interactions, the effect of mood on the body, and on health: to let that be monopolised by people like Emoto. There is the huge, fascinating field of psychoneuroimmunology: it presents us with an intellectually challenging, incomplete story, rather than a simplistic, complete one involving nice words on a jam jar. There’s a fascinating and reasonably coherent story about how stress hormones, such as cortisol, can affect depression, illness, and even addiction, through interaction with the amygdala and other parts of the brain. There’s nothing wrong with thinking positively, and there’s no reason to think it won’t work, but why retreat into nonsense?


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If you like what I do, and you want me to do more, you can: buy my books Bad Science and Bad Pharma, give them to your friends, put them on your reading list, employ me to do a talk, or tweet this article to your friends. Thanks! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

7 Responses



  1. Priyadi’s Place » Blog Archive » Mempertanyakan Seminar “The True Power of Hexagonal Water” said,

    September 3, 2006 at 8:17 am

    […] Literate Molecules […]

  2. fredi said,

    July 18, 2008 at 7:58 am

    Awesome items!! Give us the full lowdown along with loads of pictures when you get back.

    fredi
    www.gigwebhosting.com

  3. sara143 said,

    July 21, 2008 at 11:15 am

    WOW, this post is absolutely great, i saw it as a screen shot somewhere and i just had to get my hands on it. Its worth it. Thanks

    Sara
    www.corpgearusa.com

  4. mocha said,

    July 21, 2008 at 11:47 am

    You might be right about this post. But I have more faith in Jobs’ intuition to pick a good time to dive into subscription than I do in my intuition.

    mocha
    www.yourbusinessopp.com

  5. Honey said,

    July 24, 2008 at 7:55 am

    Keep up the nice work dude.
    www.waterweight.net
    www.hardwareforce.com

  6. Jack1 said,

    July 24, 2008 at 12:43 pm

    Fine work.
    www.affiliatenetworklinks
    .com
    www.Gogetmlm.com

  7. wayscj said,

    November 21, 2009 at 8:18 am

    ed hardy ed hardy
    ed hardy clothing ed hardy clothing
    ed hardy shop ed hardy shop
    christian audigier christian audigier
    ed hardy cheap ed hardy cheap
    ed hardy outlet ed hardy outlet
    ed hardy sale ed hardy sale
    ed hardy store ed hardy store
    ed hardy mens ed hardy mens
    ed hardy womens ed hardy womens
    ed hardy kids ed hardy kids ed hardy kids