OneMind

A group of people around the world who are interested in the role of human intention in scientific research recently performed a successful mass online experiment in an attempt to influence the acidity (pH) of a sample of tap water. The experiment, organized and conducted under the auspices of British science writer Lynne McTaggart, was statistically a qualified success.

The intention set by the participants was to lower the pH level of a randomly selected beaker of water by one. The group was able to lower the pH but not by a full unit. A control experiment conducted later under close to identical conditions demonstrated no such change. However, the degree of change was disappointingly small, its statistical significance marginal and the screening-out of extraneous forces and influences inadequate to draw a clear conclusion. But I do think the outcome is sufficiently positive to warrant additional work in this area and to give people like me who are interested in the subject reason for some optimism.

This was the 19th intention experiment conducted by Ms. McTaggart. Sixteen of them have been deemed by her successful and some were far more statistically successful than this one.

Next month she is teaming up with famed Japanese water researcher Masaru Emoto in four simultaneous experiments intended to affect the condition of the water in Lake Biwa.

Both McTaggart and Emoto — along, of course, with thousands of others like them — are frequent targets of criticism for their lack of complete scientific precision and controls. Such is life on the bleeding edge where science and spirituality converge. I know from personal experience that there is a great deal in human knowledge that cannot be known or proven by the scientific method, which is, after all, a set of rules for a specific set of scientific claims, not a comprehensive method for demonstrating or understanding Truth. Scientism has, in our culture, become a religion unto itself. That is not necessarily useful or desirable.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous