The title sounds strange. Well, I’m here to talk about some pseudoscience. I believe many of you must have heard about a book titled ‘The Hidden Messages in Water’ by Dr.Masaru Emoto. If not, it’s okay, I just heard about it recently.
I will briefly explain what he tries to say through that book. The book looks nice with many ‘beautiful‘ pictures of what he calls ‘crystalline water.’ He explains that water exhibits beautiful structures in response to the words we speak. If we are talking a lot of negative things, water will adopt an ‘ugly‘ form; for positive words, it will be beautiful. He has microscopic pictures of crystalline water molecules as proof. I can’t share many photos due to copyright issues. For each emotion, each music, etc. water adopts different structure.
Another exciting thing is that he explains that by prayers and all, we can transform the ugly structured polluted water into a beautifully structured healthy one. For verification, he gave pictures of contaminated water from a dam(Fujiwara) and its structure after a prayer. What he is trying to say through this is the most interesting thing. He claims that, since our body is composed of 70% water, the words we say, our prayers and music we listen will be having significant effect on our body and life!
Sounds like a great scientist, right? Let’s have an idea about his scientific career. Dr. Masaru Emoto is a ‘Doctor of Alternative Medicine’ had studied international relations at Yokohama Municipal University. After that, he got certified as a ‘Doctor of Alternative Medicine’ by the Indian Board of Alternative Medicine. He died at the age of 71.
We can’t say bad things about a person who is dead, but we can’t hide the truth. As I said earlier, he really doesn’t have any scientific background or anything, and he doesn’t have proper certification. The ‘Indian Board of Alternative Medicine(IBAM)‘ has been banned by the Central Council of Indian Medicine(CCIM), stating that it runs fake medical courses. In the website of higher education regulator UGC, IBAM is listed as a ‘fake university.’
Many studies were conducted after the publication of the book, but none of them showed anything that approves his findings. The scientific paper published to demonstrate his results were in an ‘alternative science’ journal. It is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and the article itself is an essay with photographs written by Dr. Masaru Emoto himself. A funny thought; the photos he has shown in the book may be those pleasant-looking or strange-looking photos he rarely got and sorted it into different categories verifying his pseudoscientific views.
Is there any science in what he says? All of you may know the structure of water molecule. It has a V-shape with two hydrogen atoms linked to an oxygen atom. The molecule is overall neutral, but it is polar. Oxygen atom has a slight negative charge and hydrogen atom has a slight positive charge. As water freezes, due to attraction between opposite charges, water molecules line up and give a crystal structure. It very less likely that any structural change occurs to this by vibrations caused by sound. If there is some change, how can we say that it is due to some words in a language? For example, ‘Thank you’ in different languages sound different. So, there is not any real science in this.
That’s why scientists consider this as pseudoscience. No scientist got any proof for having a beautiful crystal structure for saying thank you. Anyway, I’m no great scientist to say that he is wrong or right, there will always be people who believe such kind of things. No wonder he made a great fortune by selling normal packaged water stating ‘Purified water’. Many encouraged that. We still have people who say earth is flat, so no wonder again.
May his soul Rest In Peace.
Science Defined 