Masaru Emoto was a Japanese author, researcher and entrepreneur, who claimed
that human consciousness has an effect on the molecular structure of water.
Emoto's conjecture evolved over the years, and his early work explored his
belief that water could react to positive thoughts and words, and that
polluted water could be cleaned through prayer and positive visualization.
Emoto's work is widely considered to be pseudoscience.
Since 1999, Emoto published several volumes of a work entitled Messages from
Water, which contain photographs of ice crystals and their accompanying
experiments. Emoto's ideas appeared in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know!?.
Biography Emoto was born in Yokohama, Japan, and
graduated from Yokohama Municipal University after taking courses in
International Relations. In the mid-1990s, he began studying water in
more detail. Emoto was President Emeritus of the
International Water For Life Foundation, a non-profit organization based in
Oklahoma City in the United States. Emoto became a Doctor of Alternative
Medicine at the Open International University for Alternative Medicine in
India in 1992. Ideas
Emoto believed that water was a "blueprint for our reality" and that
emotional "energies" and "vibrations" could change the physical structure of
water. Emoto's water crystal experiments consisted of exposing water in glasses
to different words, pictures or music, and then freezing and examining the
aesthetic properties of the resulting crystals with microscopic photography.
Emoto made the claim that water exposed to positive speech and thoughts would
result in visually pleasing crystals being formed when that water was frozen,
and that negative intention would yield "ugly" frozen crystal formations. This
phenomenon was not published in any peer reviewed scientific journal, and the
best quality study Emoto published on the effects of human intention on the
structure of water did not yield positive results.
Emoto claimed that different water sources would produce different
crystalline structures when frozen. For example, he claimed that a water sample
from a mountain stream when frozen would show structures of beautifully-shaped
geometric design, but those structures would be distorted and randomly formed
if the sample were taken from a polluted water source. Emoto believed that these
changes could be eliminated by exposing water to ultraviolet light or certain
electromagnetic waves. Scientific criticism
Commentators have criticized Emoto for insufficient experimental controls and
for not sharing enough details of his approach with the scientific community.
William A. Tiller, another researcher featured in the documentary What The
Bleep Do We Know?, states that Emoto's experiments fall short of proof, since
they do not control for other factors in the supercooling of water. In addition,
Emoto has been criticized for designing his experiments in ways that leave them
prone to manipulation or human error influencing the findings. Biochemist and
Director of Microscopy at University College Cork William Reville wrote, "It
is very unlikely that there is any reality behind Emoto's claims." Reville
noted the lack of scientific publication and pointed out that anyone who could
demonstrate such a phenomenon would become immediately famous and probably
wealthy. Writing about Emoto's ideas in the
Skeptical Inquirer, physician Harriet A. Hall concluded that it was "hard to see
how anyone could mistake it for science". Commenting on Emoto's ideas
about clearing water polluted by algae, biologist Tyler Volk stated, "What he is
saying has nothing to do with science as I know it." Stephen Kiesling wrote in
Spirituality & Health Magazine, "Perhaps Emoto is an evangelist who values the
message of his images more than the particulars of science; nevertheless,
this spiritual teacher might focus his future practice less on gratitude and
more on honesty." Emoto was personally invited to take the
One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge by James Randi in 2003, and would have
received US$1,000,000 if he had been able to reproduce the experiment under
test conditions agreed to by both parties. He did not participate.
Literary reception Emoto's book The Hidden Messages of
Water was a New York Times best seller. Commenting on the book making the list,
literary critic Dwight Garner wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it
was one of those "head-scratchers" that made him question the sanity of the
reading public, describing the book as "spectacularly eccentric." Publishers
Weekly described Emoto's later work The Shape of Love as "mostly incoherent and
unsatisfying". Publications
= Books = 水からの伝言: 世界初!! 水の結晶写真集 [Messages from
Water] 1. Tokyo: Hado. 1999. ISBN 9784939098000.
English edition: The Message from Water: The Message from Water is Telling Us to
Take a Look at Ourselves 1. Hado. 2000. ISBN 9784939098000.
水からの伝言： 世界初！！水の氷結結晶写真集今日も水にありがとう [The Messages from Water] 2. Tokyo: Hado.
2001. ISBN 9784939098048. English edition: The Message from Water
2. Hado. 2001. ISBN 9784939098048. 水が伝える愛のかたち. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten. 2003.
ISBN 9784198617509. English edition: The Shape of Love:
Discovering Who We Are, Where We Came From, and Where We are Going. New York:
Doubleday. 2007. ISBN 9780385518376. Love Thyself: The Message from Water
III. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House. 2004. ISBN 9781401908997.
水可以改變我生命 : "愛和感謝"的心情可以創造積極的能量. Taibei Xian Xindian Shi. 2006. ISBN
9789576864971. English edition: The Miracle of Water.
New York; Hillsboro, OR: Atria: Beyond Words. 2007. ISBN 9781582701622.
Water Crystal Healing: Music & Images to Restore Your Well Being. New York;
Hillsboro, OR: Atria: Beyond Words. 2006. ISBN 9781582701561.
= Papers = Radin, D; Hayssen, G; —; Kizu, T.
"Double-Blind Test of the Effects of Distant Intention on Water Crystal
Formation". Explore 2: 408–11. doi:10.1016/j.explore.2006.06.004.
Radin, D; Lund, N; —; Kizu, T, "Effects of distant intention on water crystal
formation: A triple-blind replication", Journal of Scientific Exploration 22:
481–93 See also
Water memory Polywater
Penta Water Water
References Further reading
Greenberg, Gary. "There’s no evidence water can understand human speech". The
Maui News.). Orac. "Your Friday Dose of Woo:
H2Ooooooommmm". ScienceBlogs. External links
Official website "Water Crystals". whatthebleep.com.
Webpage about Emoto at the website for the movie, What the Bleep Do We Know!?
Masaru Emoto at the Internet Movie Database
"H2O dot con: Water-related Pseudoscience, Fantasy and Quakery".
chem1.com. Stephen Lower. "Welcome Page". The Open International
University for Alternative Medicines. Kuthalam, Nagapattinam District, Tamil
Nadu, India. Retrieved 17 January 2015.