Mistaken Authority

Tonight I will wrap up my response to the news24.com article on a documentary entitled Water: The Great Mystery. I started this trilogy in October 2008 and am now ready to finish it off. I must apologise for the delay, please read through the first two installments if you have not done so;

Part 1, More Water Woo, addresses the likelihood of life to evolve independent of water. Part 2, Seven Suspicious Water Claims, takes a closer look at the specific sciency sounding claims made in the documentary.

As the title of this post suggests, I will address the dangers of believing what you are told by authority figures. Very often we are presented with a person’s credentials as a “Bestselling Author” or some other string of impressive titles and we are asked to give them more credence because of their background. It is only natural for us to trust what we are told by people who have spent an awful lot of time working on a specific theory.This is known as the “Argument from Authority”, when someone tries to convince you of something based solely on their perceived authority while paying little heed to the facts be very sceptical.

Unfortunately, A person’s authority does not always mean that their theory is correct. Take the extremely popular and ancient practice of bloodletting as an example. This practice was the go-to prescription for a variety of illnesses, and it was very dangerous indeed. Today we can understand that the choice of bloodletting in the following case was erroneous;

On 12 December 1799 retired president of the United States of America, George Washington, spent several hours inspecting his farms on horseback. The weather was atrocious, progressing from snow to hail and freezing rain. When Washington awoke the next morning he was feeling ill, he had a sore throat and the symptoms of a cold. Washington decided not to take any medication, feeling as though he could overcome the sniffles. His condition deteriorated and in the early hours of the 14th he awoke gasping for air.

Mr Albin Rawlins, Washington’s estate manager attempted to treat him with a molasses and vinegar compress and when this was ineffective in relieving Washington’s dire condition, Rawlins decided to draw blood. Rawlins was an accomplished blood letter and he removed 300ml of blood from Washington. Unfortunately his condition deteriorated and Washington’s doctors were summoned, Dr. Richard Brown and Dr. Elisha Dick and Dr. James Craik.

During the hours that followed, up until the evening of the 14th, Washington’s medical team bled more than three litres of blood from his body. At one point it was noted that the blood flowed slowly and appeared viscous, this is a clear indication that Washington’s body was dehydrated from loss of blood. To put this into perspective, the average human body only holds 5 litres of blood. George Washington died that evening at the hands of the doctors who were trying to treat him through a dangerous treatment, one which was accepted as effective based on the fact that it had been used for thousands of years. Luckily the practice of bloodletting has all but disappeared today with the advent of evidence based medicine.

How does all of this relate to the theme of Water? Well, there are two researchers who are specifically named in the news24 article and the Water documentary, Masaru Emoto and Rustum Roy, and I would like you to be very careful when you are asked to believe anything these guys tell you.

At this point I need to highlight a concept known as pseudoscience. Steven Novella of the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe defines pseudoscience as;

a belief system that pretends or tries to be scientific but is hopelessly flawed in methodology. Most pseudosciences are actually ideologies masquerading as science or looking to attach the respectability of science to an ideology. Pseudosciences often go to great lengths to cover themselves in the patina of science – using scientific sounding jargon, doing studies, creating institutes and journals, etc., but they lack the authentic methods of science. The primary feature of pseudosciences is that they generally start with an ideologically desired conclusion and then work backwards to fill in justification. “Type specimens” of pseudoscience include ghosthunting, ESP research, cryptozoology, UFOlogy, and homeopathy.

Masaru Emoto is a world class pseudoscientist who believes that exposing water to different emotions can change the appearance of the ice crystals which form when that water is frozen. Basically, if you expose a vial of water to the word “Love” it will form pretty crystals, but if you expose that same water to the word “Hate” it’s crystals will be ugly. Yes, I am serious. There are so many flaws in Masaru’s reasoning that I dont even know where to begin. Isn’t it obvious that this work is highly interpretive and open to bias? Emoto and his colleagues believe that the perceived response of water to “positive” thoughts is a great way to bring about world peace. You know, since our bodies are made up of roughly 60% water, if you froze all the children on Earth we would have world peace. Interesting….

Emoto’s work is touchy feely pseudoscience and he should be regarded with the highest amount of scepticism.

Rustum Roy is another interesting character referred to in the Water documentary. He is a highly experienced and well respected academic, unfortunately he seems to have developed a moral conviction based on water woo. Rustum Roy believes in water’s power to heal the human body, if this sounds suspiciously like homeopathy you would be right. A quick inspection of his web page sows that Rustum seems to have made it his mission to prove that homeopathy is a valid medical modality.

In the abstract of an article published in the journal Homeopathy (Volume 96, Issue3, July 2007, pg175-182), available at sciencedirect.com one can see just how much of the kool-aid Rustum has consumed. I will borrow from the James Randi Educational Foundations’ forum discussion on this topic in order to highlight my concerns;

Pipirr points out;

You may note the rampant speculation, and overuse of ‘preliminary data’. However, what is most extraordinary to me is that the entire journal edition is devoted to ‘the memory of water’. It’s as though the Nature committee’s debunking of Benveniste never happened.

Mojo would like us to take note of the following;

I see he’s running his strawman argument again:

Quote:

The key stumbling block to serious consideration of homeopathy is the presumed “implausibility” of biological activity for homeopathic medicines in which the source material is diluted past Avogadro’s number of molecules.

The key stumbling block is that it doesn’t work.

And last but not least Zep asks;

Has he got any actual reliable data? Or is it all just rampant gobbledygook and speculation.

Thanks guys, I could not have said it better myself.

As I have pointed out in my previous posts on this topic, if a scientist insists on believing in something (such as homeopathy or acupuncture) when the weight of evidence points to the modality having no basis in reality, that scientist faces the very real danger of being sidelined by the community of his/her peers. Deciding to go straight to the public for fame and fortune, as Emoto and Roy have done with their work in trying to prove that water has memory by convincing as great a proportion of the populace that their methods are legitimate as possible, cannot serve as an acceptable alternative to doing real science.

P.S. I need to say a special “Thank You” to Micheal Meadon for helping me to get this article posted. You rock Mike!

Seven Suspicious Water Claims

This is part two of my three part series on the documentary Water: The Great Mystery and it follows on from the post entitled “More Water Woo”. In this article I will attempt to address the fallacious statements which are presented as science in Water. This series is a response to an article published on news24.com entitled Can Water Remember?.

The seven theories proposed in Water, together with the skeptical interpretation of those theories are as follows;

1. Any substance which comes into contact with water leaves behind an imprint of itself , this enables water to remember everything which occurs in the space around it.

Does this sound familiar to you? If you recognised this speculation as one of the central tenets of homeopathy, you would be right. A topic such as homeopathy deserves an entire blog category of it’s own and I intend to address the matter in great detail.

For the purpose of this post however, let us stick to the basics. Water memory was proposed by Jacques Benveniste as the mechanism through which homeopathic remedies allegedly have therapeutic powers. This effect is only brought about by shaking the water at each stage of dilution of the homeopathic remedy. Such remedies are so highly diluted that not even a single molecule of the original solute is likely to remain. While Benveniste’s studies were able to show an effect, no double-blind repetition of the experiments involved have been able to replicate the effects.

The concept of water memory is not accepted by the scientific community.

2. It’s further noted that, as water records information, it acquires new properties, yet its chemical composition remains unchanged…

This point is based on a logical fallacy; the unstated major premise. We must first be willing to accept that water can retain memories before it is plausible to theorize about the formation of “memory cells” within water. This point is flawed in the most basic of ways; it is not based on any plausible science. As such we do not need to address it too closely.

3. “modern instruments have made it possible to record that within each of water’s memory cells, there are 440 000 information panels”

Again, this point is flawed as it builds upon the nonsense of the point before it. We still have no proof that water can retain any kind of memory beyond a few picoseconds. What use is it to look for “information panels”?

Secondly, exactly which modern instruments, operated by whom, and recorded in which journals?

4. Our tap water is dead and leaches energy out of people, plants and animals.

As I understand it (based on my physics education), energy is the potential to do work. Perhaps the makers of Water are referring to the mythical “life energy” or “chi”. This would suggest that by drinking tap water we are somehow draining a non-existent force from our bodies.

Talk about an untestable claim. This sounds like utter rubbish to me.

5. Water responds to our thoughts and thus, by calming our minds we can calm our bodies (which are composed of approximately 70% water).

Another completely unproven theory. The only reference I have seen made to water being able to respond to our thoughts is on psychic websites and forums. Do I need to explain why psychic forums are not going to be a suitable source of information?

They don’t do science!

To be involved in the psychic community  you have to stop asking questions and start accepting what you are told. This is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. I have a glass of water on my table and I have been willing it to change in any way whatsoever for the past twenty minutes. Nothing happened.

6. Projecting emotions at a flask of water can effect the water’s energy.

I assume that we are once again reffering to the mythical life energy. Someone must have conducted a study to determine that this is true, right?

I must ask where was this research published and by whom? Until there is evidence to back up these claims it is very hard not to be skeptical about them.

The claims of Dr. Maseru Emoto as outlined in point seven seem like a load of pseudoscience if I have ever seen it! I will address Dr. Emoto’s experiments in greater detail in my third and final installment in this series.

To summarize, if you want the credibility of science, you must be willing to do real, double-blinded, peer reviewed science. The dearth of scientific literature on any of the theories proposed in Water is a serious red-flag. Accepted science is built up over decades by scientists working independently of each other, arriving at similar conclusions. Studies are carried out and journals publish the results. When you encounter a “scientific” field in which there are only a few people turning out results there is no opportunity for the literature to evolve. When the claims made by these pseudo scientists are tested and demolished by peers it says something about the original claims. If a scientist insists on pursuing a flawed theory because of emotional investment, he runs the serious risk of being sidelined by his peers.

There is nothing in the theory of water memory which holds water.

If you have any questions you would like me to address in greater detail please feel free to post them in the comments section or to drop me an e-mail on skepticdetective{at}gmail{dot}com.

More Water Woo

The past week has been one of the hottest early-spring weeks I can remember. The highveld is so dry and dusty that there is a layer of brown muck covering everything. While those of us living in Gauteng are desperately looking towards the skies for the first rains, my baloney detector has been flooded by a huge downpour of water woo.

A few days ago I read about a water science documentary which has recently been released in South Africa. Water: The Great Mystery is brought to us by the same people who produced What the Bleep do We Know?. Water is a controversial “documentary” which addresses the theme of “water memory”, that is the theory that water somehow responds to our thoughts and through this strange telepathy can have a profound impact on our health.

I have not yet been lucky enough to watch Water but I will as soon as I get the chance. However, I did run across a review on health24.com which deals with some of the theories proposed in the film. The author of this article, Carine van Rooyen,  seems at first to have taken the typically sloppy approach of presenting a platter of nonsense and then “letting you decide for yourself”. This may seem like a reasonable proposition, unfortunately however, most people are terrible at deciding for themselves and tend to accept what they are told (unless it contradicts something they already believe).

In the second section of the article Carine does present a well balanced criticism of water memory. She also invites feedback in the comments section. My feedback is a little too long for the few lines provided, so what follows is my rational response to Carine’s article. I hope that you will take this opportunity to study a different viewpoint, do a little research of your own, then you decide for yourself.

The “facts” which are supposedly established in the introduction to the movie are patently ridiculous. The assertion that Scientists (you know, those fellows in lab coats) agree that life on Earth could not survive without water may seem obvious if you do not keep up with scientific research. However in an article entitled Sharing the Secrets of Water, published in the journal Intergrative & Comparative Biology, Peter Alpert (University of Massachusetts–Amherst) describes in some detail how some forms of life can survive on earth without water.

Interestingly, Alpert notes that “a very few animals, a few plants, and an unknown proportion of microbes can be separated from water for a time. They can dry without dying, survive for hours to decades in a desiccated, ametabolic state, and then recover full function after rewetting”.

Furthermore the Tardigrade (Waterbear) has been shown to survive the vacuum of space for an entire year. These invertebrates are certainly remarkable, they can survive the harshest environment conceivable. Jonsson et al published their findings regarding this Tardigrade experiment in the journal Current Biology, 9 September 2008.

If earth-life can survive without water, surely life can evolve without water. It may not be any kind of  life of which we could conceive, but that does not mean that it is impossible.

The claim that water is the only “substance” which can exist on earth in all three states really causes me some cognitive dissonance. A substance is “that which has mass and occupies space” according to the free dictionary. That is a very broad definition and the preceeding claim seems highly unlikely. In Popular Mechanics, October 2008, there is a short article about researchers at the University of Maryland who have developed a device to generate magnetic fields like that of the Earth. It is a gigantic spinning ball of, amongst other things, sodium. When this device is at rest the sodium is in a solid state. When the Maryland researchers need to fire that baby up they must first heat the sodium to 97,7 degrees celsius; melting point. Well, that is only two states, to complete the trio one need only note that sodium gas is commonly used in sodium lights.

The claim that water defies gravity in order to rise up through the trunks of mighty trees actually made me laugh out loud. Have these people not heard of osmosis? I did not study biology after selection in high school, but what I did learn is that water enters a tree through it’s roots and is transported up through the xylem and into the leaves by means of capilliary action. The water does not rise through the tree independently, it is propelled upwards by mechanical action.

As this post is getting rather long, I will write two follow up pieces. In part two I will take a closer look at the scientific claims made in Water and in part three we will explore why you should not believe everything Rustum Roy tells you.

Stay tuned

SD