Masaru Emoto Rice Experiment

OK so I saw this on Facebook a month ago and doubtful as I am I decided to recreate the experiment in my home. I am also terribly busy so for the entire 30 days I probably missed talking to the rice by half of them. I video taped the beggining and results which I can post if interested-but surprisingly the rice that I was pleasant to tasted like sake, the negative rice tasted like rice vinegar, and the one I ignored smelled like dishwater that had stagnated and grew mold. I wasn't brave/foolish enough to taste the third. Visually none of them changed colors, although the negative rice turned into powder, the positive split down the center and ignored one stayed whole. I am going to do the experiment again, except this time all three vials will be positive rice. Has anyone else done this experiment? Thoughts?

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehlw-9PJkIE

http://is-masaru-emoto-for-real.com/

the James Randi Educational foundation, an organization that offers a “one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event” (Randi, Challenge) has offered to give Dr. Emoto the prize if he will agree “to perform his tests in a double-blind fashion” (Randi, Water), yet Dr. Emoto has not responded.

A guy who makes money selling magic water did an experiment and found that water can be magical. #noconflictofinterest 12 litres of water for $46 http://www.h2omwater.com/ http://www.prweb.com/releases/water/emoto/prweb451388.htm

This is similar to the prayer study that was performed for heart surgery patients over the course of 10 years. Positive/negative intentions from prayer surprisingly had no effect on the patient.

I love the James Randi foundation, Storge, if you can magically make rice do that then you win $1 million.

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

Yeah I already printed out a copy of the entry form. However if there is no representative I can visit daily for a month I would have to fly out to one at my expense and spend a month there. Plus in the disclaimer it states that even if you prove something they are not obligated to publish or award you the money. Seems like a lot of road blocks for an iffy prize. Still, I'll try and apply, we'll see where it goes. I'll still do the trial tests first, just so I don't waste my time if the first result was a fluke. Maybe that was why Emoto declined the challenge.. Japan to America is quite the commute for an iffy prize.

Also, if you've ever used homeopathic medicine (arnica is popular) then you are essentially buying magic water. I sold it at the store i worked at, people swore by it, i'm still dubious of it.

I appreciate your skepticism and support.

Well he actually goes to other countries to give talks, so it wouldn't be that impeding.

You'll have to see what they say, what they stipulate for the conditions.

Most of the people that believe in pseudoscience do so completely sincerely, they do actually believe that these sorts of things work and not for some ulterior motive. One of the main reasons for these beliefs is confirmation bias - you only notice when the results match what you want and simply forget all the times they don't. You remember how many times you roll a 6 (on a six sided die), but forget all the times it doesn't land on a 6 for example.

Why is it called pseudoscience?
Pseudoscience is essentially any natural thing which claims to be true but hasn't followed scientific rigor (as a rough definition). That doesn't mean that dark matter is pseudoscientific, because it is hypothetical, it is an idea which needs to be tested.

Similarly the 'rice hypothesis' (for lack of a better name) that you are doing is hypothetical, then you do the experiment to see if what happens in nature matches with your idea and then it is true (science) or not-true (meaning that your hypothesis might need adjustment). Pseudoscience is something that claims to be science, but hasn't fulfilled the requirements of normal scientific procedure.

Just as an example with your experiment, you would need about 9 jars for it to even be considered a fair test (one of the requirements of the scientific process).

Why?

Because you need to eliminate anomalies.

One way is to have a control jar of rice (like in the one you are experimenting). But how do you know if the jars are equally clean? Perhaps the jar that rotted used dirty water or a dirty glass and the others didn't because they were clean? Clean here meaning sterile, not just washed in soapy water.

So you need 3 completely sterile jars that you say good/bad/nothing to. (sterile water/jar and also requiring airtight)
Then you should have 3 dirty jars that you say good/bad/nothing to.
Then you should have 3 'normal' jars (washed in washing up liquid and left as normal.

If what you are saying is true then the effects will be obvious in each jar.

Want to know another annoying thing? What I just described still isn't enough. You would need at least 30 jars of each type (good/bad/nothing) for each of the three experiment to again reduce anomalies.

Having one jar just means that there is something of around 33% chance that the jar is anomalous.
If we compare this with particle physics, scientific discoveries of 1.39% are too inaccurate. You need a '5 sigma' level of accuracy which is 0.023% accuracy. This means that out of 1 million measurements 999,770 would have to be correct.

Obviously that is different to what you're doing, but what I am trying to illustrate here is that 'proving' something is an incredibly hard process. Drinking homeopathic water and feeling better is absolutely no proof whatsoever - that is why it is pseudoscience.

I really appreciate the explanation and demonstration of the scientific method. Yes, the first test I did was just to see if it were possible to have any other result other than moldy rice at the end of it. I do realize that the test was hardly an experiment. I just happened to have 3 jars of glass hanging around that I was going to fill and use as Christmas presents (obviously didn't get around to that). While I am familiar with the scientific method, I also lack time, so I was posting in hopes that someone had already gone in-depth into this project. I mean, they were sanitized and carefully measured, but they were located where each jar may have gotten different amounts of indirect sunlight each day and my kid knocked on one of the jars once, lol.

But I had figured on just doing the 3 jars again with positive "waves" and if I had another revealing result then I would shell out the 6 bucks and get the full 9 jars. However, your post does convince me that 9 jars would not be enough. And that a large number of jars would need quite a bit of room to set up for a month. Plus having to talk to 20 jars daily does not sound like something I have time to do. Maybe if I invested in 30 testing tubes that could cut down on space. Plus tubes are easier to sanitize. So, are you saying that 30 tubes would still not be enough? I'm not familiar with 5 sigma level.

It is a bit interesting that Emoto hasn't hired someone to represent him overseas for a month. I can see him being too busy, but a student looking to spend some time in the states could earn some income doing this for him. I would also think that there are plenty of research labs in Japan that could have proven/disproven this. Perhaps none of them has taken it seriously to consider. I guess that's why I'm interested in doing this. I always hear the never ending debate of "This exists 'cause I have faith in it and you can't disprove it!" And the contrary, "This cannot exist because it can't be tested and you are just making things up!" -paraphrasing there by the way. So I jumped on the chance to run an experiment of something "paranormal" that looked like it could actually be tested. I always thought that Edison (or Tesla depending on your history lessons) was always considered somewhat of a wizard to the layman, until science could make a light bulb seem mundane. Maybe Emoto is onto something that may be quite mundane someday, but lacked the tools to do so. Maybe the world has gotten too used to scientists explaining science to us to try our own experiments.

And I totally agree on the homeopathics. It's a placebo effect as far as I'm concerned. I didn't realize I was pushing it as fact, sorry. I was just sharing my own story of "magic water" from my work experience.

It's not particulate, its sub-atomic level information storage :blink: :laugh:

Nothing which cannot be proved can be fact, but I think it can remain 'unknown'!?

It does seem very unlikely that homeopathic things work, but I'm happy to believe it in the interests of exploring it and potentially receiving benefit from it (for whatever reason). My fav is Oscillococcinum , which I call duck balls
:whistle:

Just dont call me a quack

true or not....

This is my water filter jug at home which I wrote on after reading up on stuff I heard about in The Field IP lesson. Does my water change? I have no idea, but it reminds me to think positively about my health and happiness every time I use it. Which is usually at least a couple times a day.