Radin, Lund ,Emoto, and Kizu - 'Effects of Distant Intention on Water Crystal Formation: A Triple-Blind Replication'

7/27/2019 Radin, Lund ,Emoto, and Kizu - 'Effects of Distant Intention on Water Crystal Formation: A Triple-Blind Replication'

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Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol . 22. No- 4. pp 481-49 3. 2008 0892-3310/08

Effects of Distant Intention on Water CrystalFormation: A Triple-Blind ReplicationD E A N R A D I N . ' N A N C Y L U N D . ' M A S A R U E M O T O , ^ AN D

TAKASHIGH'institute of Noetic Sciences01 San Antonio RoadPetahima. CA 94952-9524e-mail: [email protected]

IH M General Institute. Tokyo, Japan

AbstractAn experiment tested the hypotheses that water exposed to distantintentions affects the aesthetic rating of ice crystals formed from ihai water.Over three days, 1,900 people in Austria and Germany foiused their intenlionstowards water samples located inside an elcctromagncticiilly shielded room inCalifornia. Water samples located near the target water, hul unknown to thepeople providing intentions, acted a.s "proximal" controls. Other sampleslocated outside ihe shielded room acted as di.stant controis.lee drops formed from samples of water in the different treatment conditionswere photographed by a technician, each image was assessed for aestheticheauty by ov er 2..'i()(} independe nt judg es, and the resul tinj' J ala were ar!alyed.all by individuals blind with respect to the underlying ircaimeni conditions.Results suggested that crystal images in the intenlionally treated conditionwere rated as aesthetically more beautiful than proximal control crystals (p =0.03, one-tailed). This outcome replicates the results of an earlier pilot test.

Keywords: intentionwaterconsciousnessIntroduction

Cati one person's intention affect another person's health from a distance? Agrowing number of clinical studies have investigated this question. Some ofthem provide positive evidence', others do not". To hi-ip study this que.stionunder more stringent laboratory controls, investigators have also exploredwhether one person's intention can affect another person s nervous system froma distance . From those studies the evidence is clearer. From a meta-analyticperspective the original question can be answered with a tentative yes'*.Tentative, because while the evidence is statistically signiUcant and repeatable.the observed effects are small in magnitude, nontrivial to replicate, and theo-retical explanations remain speculative.' '


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Effect of Intention on Water 483study, but they were not informed about the existence of the proxitnal controlsuntil alter all distant intention treatments had ended.

The c()tnpari.son of principal interest in this study was the average (blindlyrated) aesthetic differences of frozen water crystals obiained using the treatedvs. proximal control samples. This is because those two conditions were locatedclose to each other in the same environment, and because the proximal controlwas not inllueticed by M.E. or T.K.'s prior knowledge of its existence. That is.to take seriously the hypothesis that intention plays a tole in this experiment,we felt it was necessary to constrain who biew about the potential targets ofintentional influence. By analogy with a quantum optit s systern, in which theknowledge one has of the path that photons take through a double-slit apparatusinfluences the behavior of those photons, we speculated that knowledjie of iheexperimental conditions in this test might inlluence what was ultimatelymeasured. Thus, to provide some control over the distant intentions in thisstudy we required a comparison condition that was unknown to M.E.. to T.K.,or to the groups of "distant inten ders ." This was pro^ ided by the ptoxim atecontrol. The distant control was retained in this stud> primarily because weused a similar control in the previous study, so M.E. and T.K. wottid haveexpected it.

ntcmional TrealmentsOn May 20, 2006. in Graz. Austria, M.E. led a grottp of about a thousandpeople in a prayer of gratitude directed towards the water in the IONSlaboratory, some 5.700 miles away. M.E. showed the audience where the IONSlaboratory was located in relationship to Graz through a .sequence of imagesfrom the Google Earth global mapping application. Then he showed the digitalphoto of the treatment bottles inside the shielded chamber with the words of an

intentional "prayer for water" overlaid on the photo. Afier explaining the photoand purpose of the experitnent, M.E. led the group in speaking aloud the wordsof the prayer for about five minutes. M.E. led a second group of 450 people ina simitar exerci.se on May 23 . 2006, from Nurem berg, Germ any, and then a thirdgroup of 500 people frotn Munich. Gennany on May 24. 2006.The day after the third group sent their intentions, N.L. retrieved all six bottlesfrom the laboratory. Then she and D.R. (who remained blind to the bottles"conditions) wrapped the bottles in sepatate sheets of aluminutn foil and placedall six bottles in a box. That package was placed inside a larger box. cushioned

with foam peanuts, and mailed to M.E.'s laboratory in Tokyo. Al this point D.R.informed M.E. and T.K. about the existence of the proximal controls Like D.R.,


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484 D. Radin et al.Ctystal Analysis

Upon receiving the six bottles. T.K. blindly examined water samples fromeach bottle according to the following procedures:

1) From each bottle, a drop (approximately 0.5 ml) of water was placedinto each of 50 Petri dishes, and a lid identifying Ihe bottle's randomlyassigned letter (A-F) was placed on eacb dish. Thus there were 50 waterdrops tested from each bottle.

2) Each dish was then placed on a tray in a random position in a freezermaintained at -25 to -30 degrees C for a minimum of three hours. Therandom placements helped to ensure that potential temperature differen-ces within the freezer would be randomized among the dishes.3) T.K. later removed the dishes from the freezer, and in a walk-in refrig-erator (maintained at - 5 degrees C) he look a photo of the apex of eachresulting ice drop using a stereo optical microscope at either lOOX or200X, depending on the presence and size of a crystal. Based on the re-sults of the earlier experiment., some water drops were not expected toproduce any discernable crystals.4) All 300 resulting photographs, from all six bottles, were then emailed toD.R., each identified with a bottle assignment letter A-F, and a within-bottle sample num ber from 1 to 50.

Aesthetic Assesstnents and AnalysisTo provide blind, subjective assessments of the aesthetic beauty of tbe watercrystals, D.R. created a website to allow individuals to judge each crystalphotograph on two factors. The factor of principal interest was beauty, tneaningthat the picture was aesthetically pleasing in some way. A .second, exploratoryfactor was interest, meaning tbat the picture was notable in some way. In both

cases the rating choices ranged over a seven-point scale, from "not" to "very."e.g. "not beautiful to "very beatitiful." Each participating judge viewed andrated 50 photos, randomly selected out of the 300 available photos, and pre-sented one at a time in a newly randomized order.We asked judges to rate both beauty and intere.st because prior research onaesthetic judgments, in realms ranging from fine art, to faces, to commercialproduct design, suggests that numerous factors influence aesthetic preference.They include figurai goodness, figure-ground contrast, stimulus repetition,symmetry, and prototypicality.'" Such factors suggest that asking for a single

rating of aesthetic beauty may not be sufficient to capture individuals" fullassessments of the photographs of frozen water. Whether the factor of intere.sf


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Effect of Intention on Water 485intentionaltreatment

proximalcontrol

distantcontrol

bottle bottle1 2

bottle bottle1 2

bottle bottle1 2

sample sample sample sample sample sample1-50 1-50 1-50 1-50 1-50 1-50

averagebeautyratingaveragebeautyrating

averagebeautyratingFig. I. The intentional hypothesis was lested using a hierarchically nesled variance componentsanalysis, with treatment condition as a fixed effect, and buttles within condition andsamples within bottles as random effects.

control condition, a mixed, hierarchically nested variance components analysisof variance was employed'"*, where treatment condition was a fixed effect, andthe two bottles used per condition and 50 cry,stals sampled per bottle were bothrandom effects (see Figure 1 ).

Image Contrast AnalysisIn addition to the subjective assessments, we also used image processingsoftware (Matlah 7.0.1 Image Processing Toolbox, The M,ithworks, Inc., Natick,Massachusetts) togenerate an objective score of image "con trast" for each of the300 photographs. Contrast in this context refers to the proportion of black vs.white in an image. This was a useful metric because when crystals appear on theapex of frozen water drops, they tend to rise up beyond tlie surface of the drop,

partially because ice expands when it freezes and also because water ctystalsgrow out like branches on a tree. When a microphotograph is taken of such


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486 D. Radin et al.

Fig. 2. Exam ple of images with high (lop |a|} and low (bnttom |b |) contrast. The left image show sa crystal formation, the right does not.


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Effect of Intention on Water 487

5 - distantproximal treated

ii i

51 101 201 25151image

Fig. 3. Averag e ratings of aesthetic beauty for all 300 imag es, with 95 % confidence intervals.

correlated with the average ratings of aesthetic beauty, and thus that cnntrast inthe treatment condition would be higher than in the proximal control condition.Results

Analysis of CrystalsSubjective assessment ratings were collected online for one month. Duringtbat time, 2,579 people had each assessed 50 randomly selected images, fora total of 128,950 a.ssessments and an average of 430 beauty and interest ratings

for each of the 300 images. These average ratings, in the form of point values,formed the dependent variables in the subsequent analyses. Assessment datafrom individuals who started to evaluate images but stopped before finishing all50 were excluded from further analysis.Figure 3 sbows the average assessments and 95% confidence intervals foraverage ratings of aesthetic beauty for each image. Images I-IOO correspond tothe distant control condition, 101-200 to the proximal control condition, and201-300 to the treated condition. The grand average rating for heattty was 1.77(on a scale of 0-6), thus most of the images were not regarded as particularly

beautiful. Of the 300 images, 270 obtained average beauty ratings greater than1.0, This subset of images was examined in a secondary analysis because it was


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488 D. Radin et al.

Hierarchically

CnniiitionBdttie/conditionSample/hottie

TABLE iNested Variance ComponetitsBeaut}' as the DepcndetitEflect

fixedrandomrandom

df23294

Analysis for AllMeasure

MS2.130.160.69

Trials, with

F13.090.23

P.03.87

The grand average rating for interest was 2 .51 . The correlation betweenaverage ratings of beauty vs. interest was highly positive (r 0.86, t = 29.1, N =300, p = 0). The correlation between beauty and normalized image contrast wasalso positive (r = 0.30, t - 5.35, N = 300, p - 8.97 X lO"**).'*

Analysis I: A e.^theiic Beau tyThe treatment condition resulted in a significant, albeit weak main effect {p =0.03; Table 1; Figure 4). When interest was used as a covariate of beauty, themain effect for condition was no longer significant (F[2,293I = 3.03. p 0.20).The latter is not too surprising given the strong correlation between beauty and

interest variables. For the subset of 270 trials with beauty > 1.0, the resultsremained significant (p = 0.04; Table 2; Figure 4).

2.12.0

ana 1.9

1.81.7

1.6


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Effect of Intention on Water 489

Hierarchically

ConditionBottle/conditionSample/botlle

Nested VarianceEffect

fixedrandomrandom

TABLE 2Components Analysisdf

23264

for AllMS2.120.190.66

Trials where Beauty > 1F

11.490.2S

P0484

The pairwise comparison of principal interesttreated vs. proximalcontrolssupported the intentional hypothesis for all trials (t[l98] = 1.67, p 0.05, one-tailed). The same comparison was somewhat stronger for the subset oftrials where beauty > I (t[1681 - 2 . 3 2 , p ^O .O l, one-tailed). The distant contro]condition resulted in slightly more beautiful crystals than the mientionalcondition when considering all trials (t[l98] ^0.77), and slightly less beautifulfor the subset where beauty > 1 (t l i68] = -0.14 ).

Analysis 2: Image ContrastNormalized image contrast scores resulted in a nonsignificant main effectacross the three conditions for all trials (p ~ 0.25; Tables 3 & 4; Figure 5), but

a pairwise comparison between the treated vs. proximal controls showedsuggestive effects for both all trials, t( 198) = 1.85 (p 0.03, one-tailedi, and forthe subset of trials where beauty > i, t{l68) 1.55 (p = 0.06, one-tailed). Thedistant control comparisons were nearly identical to the proximal controls.

DiscussionThis experiment found a modestly significant difference (p 0.03) in blind

ratings of subjective aestbetic beauty of crystals formed from water samples"exposed" to distant intentions vs. proximal and distant control samples. Thecomparison of main interest confirmed, weakly, that the treated water crystalswere rated as more beautiful, on average, than the proximal controls (p 0.05,one-tailed). A similar analysis using objective ratings of image contrast wa.snot significant when comparing across the three conditions, but a plannedTABLE 3Hierarchically Nested Variance Components Analysis ft)r All Trials. Using Normalized

Image Contrast as the Dependent Variable


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490 D. Radin et al.TABLE 4Analysis for Al! Trials where Beauty > I. Using Normalized Image Contrast as theDependeni Variable

ConditionBottleSample

Effectfixedrandomrandom

df23264

MS2.041.540.94

df2.9926 4

MSI..540.94

F1.331.65

P.39.18

comparison between the treated and proximal controls again showed a modestdifference in favor of the intentional hypothesis (p 0.03).It should be noted that the distant controls were judged as being slightly(nonsignificantly) more beautiful than the treated samples when considering alltrials, but nevertheless for the comparison of main interest (treated vs. proximalcontrols) the difference was in alignment with the previously reported pilot test.The present experiment extended the earlier test design by including five newfeatures to address potential alternative explanations, They included (a) usinga proximal control condition to eliminate environmental differences between thetreated and control samples, (b) placing Petri dishes in random positions inthe deep freezer to average out any systematic temperature differences in the

freezer, (c) employing a triple-blind design to control for expectation biases onthe part of the photographer, judges, and data analyst, (d) including imageprocessing to objectively characterize the images, and (e) analyzing all imagesrather than just those judged by the photographer to contain crystals.

0.403

S 0.2

0-10.0

I all trialsibeai i ly>


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Effect of Intention on W ater 491These design elements excluded obvious environmental differences andconventional subjective biases as plausible explanations for the observed results,and the combined results of the two experiments appear to exclude chance as an

explanation (unu'eighted Stouffer Z ^ 3.34, p ^ 0.0004). At first blush this seeins0 imply that distant intention influenced water crystallization properties inaccordance with the hypothesis. Howevei. as in any experiment involvingintention, the intentions of the investigators cannot be cleanly isolated fromthose of the nominal participants and this in turn constrains how one shouldproperly interpret the results.In addition, there were many uncontrolled degrees of freedom in thtsexperiment which may have allowed "unintended intentional" effects to creepin. They ail involve human decisions, e.g. selecting six specific bottles of waterfrom a huge population of available bottles, randomly assigning those bottles tothree conditions, selecting and preparing the water drops, placing the water dropsamples inside the freezer, searching for and photographing ice crystals on thefrozen water drops at different magnification levels, choosing one of a largepossible set of image processing algorithms to provide an objective measure ofimage contrast, and so on. The challenge for future tests of this kind is to findways of reducing these degrees of freedom without imposing such severeconstraints on the design that the effect of interest is either quenched out ofexistence, or that the experimen t becom es so expensive to conduct that it doesn'ttake place at all,Notes

' Sicher. F., Targ, E.. Moore, D.. 2nd, & Smith, H. S. (1998). A randomizeddouble-blind study of the effect of distant healing in a population withadvanced AIDS. Report of a small scale study. Western Journal of M edicine,69, 356-363; Astin, J. A., Harkness, E., & Ernst. E. (2000). The efficacy of'distant hea ling": A systematic review of randomized trials. Annals of internalMedicine. 132. 903^910." Astin, J. A., Stone, J., Abrams, D. I., Moore, D. H., Couey, P., Buscemi, R., &Targ, E. (2006). The efficacy of distant healing for human immunodeficiencyvirusresults of a randomized trial. Alternative Therapies in Health andMedicine. 12(6). 36-41 : Harkness, E. F., Abbot, N. C , & Ernst, E. (2000).A randomized trial of distant healing for skin wart^. American Journal ofMedicine. lOH. 448-452; Aviles, J. M., Whelan, S. E., Hemke, D. A.,Williams, B. A., Kenny, K. E., O'Fallon, W. M., & Kopecky, S, L. (2001).Intercessory prayer and cardiovascular disease progression in a coronary careunit population: A randomized controlled trial. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 76,


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492 D. Radin et al.Crater, S. W., Gallup, D., Blankenship. J. C , Cuffe, M,, Guarneri, M.. K rieger,R. A., Kshettry, V. R., Mort-is. K., Oz, M., Pichard, A.. Sketch, M. H., Jr.,Koenig, H. G., Mark, D., & Lee, K. L. (2005). Music, imagery, touch, andprayer as adjuncts to interventional cardiac care: The Monitoring andActualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II Randomised study. Lancet.366(94%]), 211-217; Benson, H., Dusek, J. A., Sherwood, J. B.. Lam, P.,Bethea, C. F., Carpenter, W .. Levitsky, S., Hill, P. C , Clem, D. W., Jr., Jain,M. K., Drumel. D., Kopecky, S. L., Mueller, P. S., Marek, D., Rollins, S., &Hibberd, P. L. (2006). Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer(STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial ofuncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer. Americati HeartJournal. 151, 934-942.Radin, D. I. (2004). Event-related electroencephalographic correlationsbetween isolated human subjects. Jourtiai of Alternative a nd Co tiiplcnietitaryMedicine, 10, 31 5-3 23 ; W ackermann, J., Seiter, C , Keibel. H., & Walach, H.(2003). Correlations between brain electrical activities of two spatiallyseparated human subjects. Neuroscience Letters, 336, 60-64; Achterberg, J.,Cooke, K., Richards, T., Standish, L. J.. Kozak. L., & Lake, J. (2005).Evidence for correlations between distant intentionality and brain functionin recipients: A functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis. .Iimrm tl ofAlternative and Complementary Medicine. 11. 965-971; Richards, T. L.,Kozak, L., Johnson. L. C , & Standish. L. J. (2005). Replicable functionalmagnetic resonance imaging evidence of correlated brain signals betweenphysically and sensory isolated subjects. Journal of Alternative andComplemetitary Medicine. !/. 95 5-9 63 ; Standish. L. J., Johnson, L. C ,Kozak, L., & Richards , T. (2003). Evidence of correlated functional magneticresonance imaging signals between distant human brains. AlternativeTherapies in Health and Medicine, 9, 122-125: Standish. L. J., Kozak, L.,Johnson, L. C , & Richards, T. (2004). Electroencephalographic evidence ofcorrelated event-related signals between tbe brains of spatially and sensoryisolated human subjects. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine,10, 307-314.

^ Schmidt, S., Schneider, R., Utts, J., & Walacb. H. (2004). Distantintentionality and the feeling of being stared at: Two meta-analyses. Briti.shJournal of Psychology, 95, 235-247.Walach, H. (2005). The complementarity model of brain-body relationship.Medical Hypothe.ses. 65(2), 380-388; Walach. H. (2005). Generalizedentanglement; A new theoretical model for understanding the effects of com-plementary and alternative medicine. Journal of Alternative and Complemen-


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Effect of Intention on Water 493 Scbwartz. S. A., DeMattei, R. J.. Bratne. E. G., & Spottiswoode S. J. P. (1990).Infrared spectra alteration in water proximate to the palms of therapeuticpractitioners, Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine, 1, 43-72; Roney-Dougal.

S. M., & Soifvin. J. (2004). Field study of enhancem ent effect on lettuce seeds:Their germination rate, growth and health. Journal of the Society for Psychical/Research. 66. 129-142; Lenington. S. (1979). Effect of holy water on thegrowth of radish plants. Psychological Reports. 45, 381-382.^ Em oto, M . (2004 ). H ealing with water. Journal of Alternative andComplementary Medicine, 10, 19-21; Emoto. M. (2004). The HiddenMessages in Water. Hillsboro, OR; Beyond Words Publishing;." Radin. D. I., Hayssen, G., Emoto, M., & Kizu, T. (2006). Double-blind testof the effects of distant intention on water crystal formation. Explore: TheJournal of Science and Healing. 2(5). 408-411.

'" The analysis reported here differs from the original plan in response toa reviewer's comments, so an argument could be made that this study, asreported, is actually double-blind.'' Hekkert. P.. Snelders, D., & van W ieringen, P. C. W. (2003). 'Most advanced.yet acceptable": Typicality and novelty as join t predictors of aesthe tic

preference in industrial design. British Journal of Psychology. 94. 111-124.'^ Reber, R., Schwarz, N.. & Winkelman, P. (2004). Processing fluency andaesthetic pleasure: Is heauty in the perceiver's processing experience?.Personality and Social Psychology Review. H, 364--3S2.' ^ Statistica 7.0 . StatSoft, Tulsa , OK, Variance components and mixed modelANOVA/ANCOVA analysis, in a hierarchically nesied design.''^ Normalized contrast values were formed as z (r ni)ls, where c was the rawcontrast value for a given image, m was the mean ot all raw contrast values,and s the standard deviation of all raw contrast values.


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Radin, Lund ,Emoto, and Kizu - 'Effects of Distant Intention on Water Crystal Formation: A Triple-Blind Replication'

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