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SecretMethod70 · 01-02-2006, 09:26 AM

Don't mean to be a pain in the ass and rain on the parade, but this is just one of many articles about how terribly flawed "What the bleep do we know?" is:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science...cbccdrcrd.html

Quote:

Cult Science
Dressing up mysticism as quantum physics

By Gregory Mone | October 2004

Beware: A ridiculous new science movie is coming to a theater near you. What the #$*! Do We Know?, an independent film slated for national release this month, pretends to be an exploration of the grand questions of science, reality and life. It jumps between a fictional story about a divorced photographer and snippets of interviews with authoritative-looking individuals. Although several of them have big bookshelves in view behind them, it quickly becomes clear to the attentive viewer that few of these talking heads are making any sense. They speak of “infecting the quantum field” and refer to bio-body suits and antigravity magnets without explanation. Not until the credits roll, when the “experts” are finally introduced, do we learn that the two people who do most of the talking about neuroscience and physics are not actually scientists. One is a chiropractor. The other is a 35,000-year-old warrior named Ramtha, who is being “channeled” by a blonde woman from Washington. Oh, and the chiropractor is one of her devotees. As are the filmmakers. In short, what we’ve got here are the musings of a cult masquerading as a science documentary. If the movie even has a central message, it could best be summarized as, “We don’t know #$*!”

Not everyone finds this amusing. One of the few legitimate academics in the film, David Albert, a philosopher of physics at Columbia University, is outraged at the final product. He says that he spent four hours patiently explaining to the filmmakers why quantum mechanics has nothing to do with consciousness or spirituality, only to see his statements edited and cut to the point where it appears as though he and the spirit warrior are speaking with one voice. “I was taken,” Albert admits. “I was really gullible, but I learned my lesson.” Yet the real shame with this film is that it plays on people’s fascination with science while distorting and misrepresenting that science. Before its national release, the film packed theaters up and down the West Coast. Instead of stoking the curiosity of those moviegoers, What the #$*! numbed them with mindless quantum drivel.

This is all not to mention that the film was entirely produced by the cultish Ramtha School of Enlightenment

Specifically regarding the water crystals, there is a section on wikipedia:

Quote:

Masaru Emoto's work (The Hidden Messages in Water) plays a prominent role in a scene set in a subway tunnel, where the main character happens upon a presentation of displays showing images of water crystals. In the movie, "before" and "after" photographs of water are presented as evidence that specific words written on pieces of paper and affixed to different containers of water have the power to transform the water into beautiful crystalline shapes. Examples include "You make me sick", "Love and Gratitude", and "Merci". The procedure followed by Emoto can be found at this site. In the movie, it is claimed that "non-physical events" of "mental stimuli" are the cause of this transformation, but skeptics have pointed out that the "after" photographs are microscopic images of the water after being frozen (aka snowflakes) — a step not disclosed in the movie.

Additional problems arise when it becomes clear that Emoto's work is more artistic than scientific. For example, Emoto never submitted his work for peer review, and he did not utilise double blind methodology. If this had been the case, the individual providing the specimen (i.e., the person who selected the water sample, poured it into the container, labeled the container with a message, and froze it) would need to be a different person than the individual who later received the ice for analysis and photography. This second individual would also need to be unaware of what each specimen had been labelled. If the same person performed all of these tasks, this individual could easily select sections of the frozen water that matched what they wanted to see, perhaps unconsciously (a phenomenon otherwise known as confirmation bias). In other words, if the individual wanted to demonstrate that happy words produced aesthetically pleasing shapes, they only needed to find a section of the ice which was aesthetically pleasing. Conversely, if they wanted to demonstrate that angry words created aesthetically displeasing crystals, they again just needed to search until they found a section that did not look as good. Emoto also claims that polluted water does not crystallize. Depending on the properties of the pollutant, heavily polluted water will still form crystals, though the crystals may contain more crystallographic defects than pure water would. These changes in the way the crystals form can be readily explained using basic chemistry and physics.

Emoto essentially appears to have arbitrarily decided what constitutes a "brilliant crystal" and an "incomplete crystal", but in a movie claiming a scientific base grounded in quantum mechanics, a quantification of what defines such crystals is required.

James Randi, founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation, has publicly offered [link] Emoto one-million dollars if his results can be reproduced in a double-blind study.