Masaru Emoto

Masaru Emoto 江本勝
Born	July 22, 1943 (1943-07-22) (age 68) Yokohama, Japan
Education	Yokohama Municipal University, Open International University for Alternative Medicine (India)
Spouse	Kazuko Emoto
Children	Three

Masaru Emoto (江本 勝, Emoto Masaru^?, born July 22, 1943) is a Japanese author and entrepreneur known for his claims that human consciousness has an effect on the molecular structure of water. Emoto's hypothesis has evolved over the years of his research. Initially Dr. Emoto claimed that high-quality water forms beautiful and intricate crystals, while low-quality water has difficulty forming crystals. According to Dr. Emoto, an ice crystal of distilled water exhibits a basic hexagonal structure with no intricate branching. Emoto claims that positive changes to water crystals can be achieved through prayer, music or by attaching written words to a container of water.

Since 1999 Emoto has published several volumes of a work titled Messages from Water, which contains photographs of water crystals next to essays and "words of intent." In addition to his books, Emoto also sells various water products from his websites and catalogs, which are purported to have healing properties derived from his research and experiments.

Emoto's ideas appeared in the popular documentary "What the Bleep Do We Know!?". Like that film, Emoto's work is widely considered pseudoscience by professionals, and he is criticized for going directly to the public with misleading claims that violate basic physics, based on methods that fail to properly investigate the truth of the claims.^[1][2]

Biography

Born in Yokohama, Japan, Emoto graduated from Yokohama Municipal University with courses in International Relations. "In 1986, he established the I.H.M. Corporation in Tokyo and is currently the head of the I.H.M. General Research Institute, Inc., the President of I.H.M., Inc., and the chief representative of I.H.M.'s HADO Fellowship".^[3] In 1992 he received certification as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine from the Indian Board of Alternative Medicines in India, an accredited institution.^[4][5] "Subsequently, he was introduced to the concept of micro-cluster water and Magnetic Resonance Analysis technology in the United States, which began his quest to discover the mystery of water".^[6]

Emoto is President Emeritus of the International Water For Life Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Oklahoma City, founded in 2005. He has three children with his wife Kazuko.^{[citation needed]}

Emoto's water crystal experiments consist of exposing water in glasses to different words, pictures, or music, and then freezing and examining the aesthetics of the resulting crystals with microscopic photography.^{[7][unreliable source?]} Emoto claims that there are "many differences in the crystalline structure of the water" depending on the type of water source, which were taken from all over the world. For example, a water sample from a "pristine mountain" stream would purportedly show a "geometric" design that is "beautifully" shaped when frozen. On the other hand, "polluted water" sources will supposedly show a "definite distortion" and will be "randomly formed".^[3]

Criticism

Commentators have criticized Emoto for insufficient experimental controls,^[8] and for not sharing enough details of his approach with the scientific community.^[9] In addition, Emoto has been criticized for designing his experiments in ways that leave them open to human error influencing his findings.^[10]

In the day-to-day work of his group, the creativity of the photographers rather than the rigor of the experiment is an explicit policy.^[11] Emoto freely acknowledges that he is not a scientist,^[12] and that photographers are instructed to select the most pleasing photographs.^[13]

In 2003, James Randi publicly offered Emoto one million dollars if his results can be reproduced in a double-blind study.^[14]

In 2005, Kristopher Setchfield from the Natural Science Department at Vermont published a paper^[15] that analyzed deeper motives regarding Emoto's study. In his paper, Kristopher writes,

Unfortunately for his credibility with the scientific community, Dr. Emoto sells products based on his claims. For example, the products page of Emoto's Hado website is currently offering "geometrically perfect" "Indigo water" that is "highly charged hexagonally structured concentrate," and supposedly creates "structured water" that is "more easily assimilated at the cellular level" for $35 for an eight-ounce bottle. Without providing scientific research references for the allegedly amazing qualities of his Indigo Water, Emoto's commercial venture calls to mind ethical concerns regarding his intent and motivation—questions that would not be present if any scientist had published research supporting his claims.

In 2006, Emoto published a paper together with Dean Radin and others in the journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. They describe that in a double blind test approximately 2000 people in Tokyo could increase the aesthetic appeal of water stored in a room in California, compared to water in another room, solely through their positive intentions.^[16]

Triple-blind study

A better-controlled "triple-blind" follow-up study published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration did not yield positive results. More than 1,900 of Mr. Emoto's followers focused gratitude on water bottles in a vault over a period of three days. The water was then frozen and compared to two different sets of controls in a very elaborate protocol. Crystals from all three groups were not, on average, considered to be particularly beautiful (scoring 1.7 on a scale of 0 to 6, where 6 was very beautiful). Crystals from the experimental group were also rated slightly less beautiful than a set of controls. An objective comparison of contrast did not reveal any significant differences among the samples.^[17]

There were, however, potential problems with the "triple-blind" follow up. As the study explains:

In any experiment involving intention, the intentions of the "investigators" cannot be cleanly isolated from those of the nominal participants and this in turn constrains how one should properly interpret the results. In addition, there were many uncontrolled degrees of freedom in this experiment which may have allowed ‘‘unintended intentional’’ effects to creep in. They all involve human decisions, e.g. selecting six specific bottles of water from a huge population of available bottles, randomly assigning those bottles to three conditions, selecting and preparing the water drops, placing the water drop samples inside the freezer, searching for and photographing ice crystals on the frozen water drops at different magnification levels, choosing one of a large possible set of image processing algorithms to provide an objective measure of image contrast, and so on."^[18]

Physician Harriet A. Hall writes, about the ideas of Emoto, that "This watery fantasy is all very entertaining and imaginative, full of New Age feel-good platitudes, holistic oneness, consciousness raising, and warm fuzzies; but it's hard to see how anyone could mistake it for science."

Books

Emoto has sold 2 million copies of his books.^[19]

• Messages from Water, Vol. 1 (June 1999), Hado Publishing, ISBN 4-939098-00-1
• Messages from Water, Vol. 2 (November 2001), Sunmark Pub. ISBN 0-7881-2927-9
• The Hidden Messages in Water (April 2004 Eng., 2001 Jap.), Beyond Words Publishing ISBN 1-58270-162-8
• The Message from Water III: Love Thyself (January 2006), published by Hay House ISBN 1-4019-0899-3
• Water Crystal Healing: Music & Images to Restore Your Well Being (17 October 2006), published by Atria Books ISBN 1-58270-156-3
• The Shape of Love: Discovering Who We Are, Where We Came From, and Where We are Going, Doubleday, 2007. ISBN 978-0-385-51837-6

See also

• Water memory
• Polywater
• Penta Water
• Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab
• Pseudoscience
• Water (2006 film)

References

1. ^ Harriet Hall. "Masaru Emoto's Wonderful World of Water". Skeptical Inquirer (Nov/Dec 2007). http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1144934/masaru_emotos_wonderful_world_of_water. 
2. ^ "The minds boggle". The Guardian. 16 May 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/may/16/g2.science. 
3. ^ ^{a b} "Masaru Emoto: Biography & Resources" (HTML). EnlightenNext.org. http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/bios/masaru-emoto.asp. Retrieved 2010-03-24. ^{[unreliable source?]}
4. ^ "Courses". Open International University for Alternative Medicine. http://www.altmeduniversity.net/courses3.htm. ^{[unreliable source?][dead link]}
5. ^ Gary Greenberg. "There's no evidence water can understand human speech". Letters to the editor, The Maui News. http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/16702.html. 
6. ^ "Authors: Dr. Masaru Emoto" (HTML). Beyond Words. http://www.beyondword.com/authors/detail/845/dr_masaru_emoto. Retrieved 2010-03-24. ^{[unreliable source?]}
7. ^ "How to Take a Water Crystal Photograph" (HTML). Masaru-Emoto.net. http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/ediary200609.html#0915. Retrieved 2011-10-10. 
8. ^ Dr. William A. Tiller, another researcher featured in the movie What The Bleep Do We Know?, has pointed out that Emoto's experiments fall short of proof, since Emoto's experiments 'do not control for one of the three key factors in the supercooling of water'. Tiller, William (2005). "What the Bleep do we Know!?: A Personal Narrative". Vision In Action 2 (3-4). http://66.201.42.16/viewitem.php3?id=910&catid=510&kbid=ionsikc. ^{[dead link]}
9. ^ Mae-Wan Ho. "Crystal Clear - Messages from Water". Science in Society. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/water4.php. 
10. ^ For example, see Radin et al., 2006, page 408.
    See also "Water:The Quantum Elixir". New Scientist (2546). April 8, 2006. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025461.200-water-the-quantum-elixir.html. 
11. ^ See extract from a February 2005 interview of Emoto by The Maui News, available on Emoto's web site here^{[dead link]}
12. ^ March 16, 2005 entry on Emoto's web diary, titled Twenty three- Vision 11 Casting Ourselves from the Principle of Yin and Yang, extracted from his 1994 book.^{[dead link]}
13. ^ See 2005 interview of Emoto by Ray Hemachandra in New Age Retailer, here, page 4.
14. ^ Talking to Water, Commentary, by James Randi, May 23, 2003.
15. ^ Review and analysis of Dr. Masaru Emoto's published work on the effects of external stimuli on the structural formation of ice crystals
16. ^ Radin, Dean; Hayssen1, Gail; Emoto, Masaru ; Kizu, Takashige (September 2006). "Double-Blind Test of the Effects of Distant Intention on Water Crystal Formation". Explore: the Journal of Science and Healing 2 (5): 408–11. doi:10.1016/j.explore.2006.06.004. PMID 16979104. http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307(06)00327-2/fulltext. Retrieved 2008-08-05. 
17. ^ Spirituality & Health Magazine
18. ^ Journal of Scientific Exploration. 4 22: 481–493. 2008. 
19. ^ Barcelona seminar, September 14, 2006 entry on Emoto's website

Further reading

• Sheridan, Patricia (September 26, 2005). "Masaru Emoto". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05269/577778.stm. Retrieved 2007-05-19. 
• Lafee, Scott (March 22, 2006). "Money can buy love – an additive to bottled water". The San Diego Union-Tribune. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060322/news_1c22singular.html. Retrieved 2007-05-19. 
• Felt, Susan (April 27, 2005). "Good vibes: Author says water holds love, gratitude". The Arizona Republic. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/arizonaliving/articles/0427emotoqqnda270.html. Retrieved 2007-05-20. 
• Norrell, Brenda (March 16, 2004). "News from the Southwest". Indian Country Today. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. http://web.archive.org/web/20070927172553/http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1079449171. Retrieved 2007-05-20. 
• Berlin, David (February 10, 2007). "Let them count the ways to court your sweetie". The San Diego Union-Tribune. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070210/news_1b10vday.html. Retrieved 2007-05-20. 
• Pasternack, Nancy (February 12, 2005). "Water-enlightening doctor comes to S.C.". Santa Cruz Sentinel. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. http://web.archive.org/web/20070930200936/http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/February/12/local/stories/11local.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-20. 
• Zander, Carly (October 13, 2005). "Global Water Guru Considers Research Center in Big Bear, Says the Native Voices Foundation". Send2Press. http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2005-10-1013-003.shtml. Retrieved 2007-05-20. 

External links

• Masaru Emoto's web site
• Emoto's section of the web site of the movie What the #$*! Do We Know!?
• James Randi's 1 million dollar challenge
• Gary Greenberg, a biomedical researcher and artist with patents for microscopes, challenges Emoto to explain why his work has not been peer reviewed
• Research paper on Emoto's findings
• Water-related pseudoscience

Persondata
Name	Emoto, Masaru
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	July 22, 1943
Place of birth	Yokohama, Japan
Date of death
Place of death