Emotive Water? What? Lets take a look...

I was having a discussion with a friend the other day, and they mentioned a study by a Japanese scientist that showed that water formed different shaped crystals when subjected to different emotional situations. Immediately alarm bells went off in my brain, as this is quite a strange thing to hear. I knew straight away that this idea was completely bogus, but I had to go and check it out for myself. So I went onto google and I searched up a few terms, and came out with this website from the aforementioned Japanese scientist.


At first glance, I noticed a few glaringly unscientific statements made by the article. The first one I noticed was this.

"Water is a very malleable substance. Its physical shape easily adapts to whatever environment is present."

Ok, anyone with a basic understanding of science would know that the world malleable is only applicable to solids. Its definition is "Capable of being shaped or formed, as by hammering or pressure: a malleable metal." So it is fairly obvious already that these people are scientifically illiterate. The second sentence is even more ridiculous, I assume they're referring to liquid water, which behaves in such a way because it has no inter-molecular structure as a liquid, that is what makes it a liquid. Anyway, they continue on after that with this.

"But its physical appearance is not the only thing that changes, the molecular shape also changes. The energy or vibrations of the environment will change the molecular shape of water. In this sense water not only has the ability to visually reflect the environment but it also molecularly reflects the environment."

 Really? The molecular shape also changes? I would be willing to bet that these ignoramuses don't even know what the molecular shape of water is, perhaps even willing to bet that they don't understand what H2O means.
Here is a graphic representation of a water molecule
 These quacks are saying that this shape changes if you subject water to different words, for example if you yell Adolf Hitler at a glass of water, the molecular shape changes, and if you then froze the water, the crystals formed would be a different shape to the 'usual', and this ice crystal would also be ugly, because you mentioned something evil. I'm not kidding, you can read all this garbage on their website for yourself.
 I can guarantee you, that if I yell at a glass of water, that the molecular shape is not going to change, the angle between the two hydrogen atoms will still remain around 104.45 degrees.

 They then go on to provide "photographic evidence" of their loony idea, they show pictures of alleged water crystals that were subjected to various words before being frozen, and that supposedly altered how the crystals formed. There are quite obviously several problems with this. Masaru Emoto is in fact not a scientist at all, he's an author, though all he has written about is his crackpot idea. He has not given any details about his methodology for conducting the experiment. He hasn't submitted it for peer review. His results have not been replicable by anyone else. Need I go on?

For good measure, I thought I'd go through Michael Shermer's Baloney Detection Kit with Masaru Emoto's claim.

The 10 Questions:
1. How reliable is the source of the claim?

Not reliable at all, the source of the claim is Masaru Emoto, an author and practitioner of alternative medicine.

2.Does the source make similar claims?

Mr. Emoto makes similar claims, mostly to do with the effect of water on people.

3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?

Not in the slightest.

4. Does this fit with the way the world works?

Not at all. Quite the contrary in fact.

5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?

Perhaps, I'm not aware of any counter-studies, as his claims do not warrant any investigation, only ridicule.

6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?

What evidence? There is none, only bogus claims.

7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?

No.

8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence?

Yes, but the evidence is bogus. He 'claims' that it is evidence, but in reality it isn't.

9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?

I'm not really sure how it fits into anything, it's rather innocuous, but it does contradict current knowledge about chemistry.

10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

I havn't really bothered to look into the personal beliefs of Mr. Emoto, I don't think it really matters at this stage.