Masaru Emoto

Masaru Emoto (1943–2014) was a Japanese author and entrepreneur (with a degree in international relations and an alternative-medicine doctorate from a non-accredited institution) who claimed that human words, thoughts, prayers, and music change the molecular structure of water, so that water exposed to “love and gratitude” forms beautiful symmetrical ice crystals while water exposed to “hate” or negative words forms ugly, disordered ones.

His photo books, especially The Hidden Messages in Water (1999/2004), became international bestsellers and he appeared in What the Bleep Do We Know!?. The experiments were not blinded: technicians who knew which water had received which “message” selected which crystals to photograph, guaranteeing experimenter bias, and crystal formation is in fact governed by ordinary factors (temperature, freezing rate, impurities, evaporation).

When James Randi offered his million-dollar prize for a properly controlled demonstration, Emoto never produced one; an independent double-blind test (Radin et al. attempted a related study, but rigorous controls remove the effect).

Emoto is nonetheless one of the most influential figures in popular manifestation culture — invoked to argue that “if thoughts change water, and you’re 70% water, thoughts change you/reality.” The reasoning is invalid and the premise is.